Mongolia | Xinjiang | Khotan | Rawak Stupa

The Roerich Expedition arrived in Ulaanbaatar on September 12, 1926. 

House where the Roerichs stayed while in Ulaanbaatar, Nicholas Roerich on the right. (Click on photos for enlargements)

House where the Roerichs stayed while in Ulaanbaatar, before it was turned into a museum

While in Ulaanbaatar Nicholas Roerich heard tales about the celebrated Rawak Stupa near Khotan, a city on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin in what is now Xinjiang Province, China, which the expedition had visited earlier: “Many other similar wonders were related to us by educated Buriats and Mongols. They spoke about a mysterious light which shines above the Khotan stupa; about the coming re-appearance of the lost Chalice of Buddha . . . He adds, “ The celebrated Suburghan near Khotan must be the place of one of the manifestations of the New Era. Khotan is the path of Buddha,” and “Khotan remembers the Signs of Maitreya [the future Buddha] over the ancient Stupa.”

The Roerich Expedition had passed through Khotan earlier. It had left the city of Leh, in Ladakh, now administered by India, on September 9, 1925, and after crossing seven high-altitude passes through the Karakorum and Kun Lun Mountains—including18,379-foot Kardong Pass, 17,753-foot Sasser Pass, 18,176-foot Karakorum Pass, 17687-foot Suget Pass, and 17,598-foot Sanju Pass—finally reached the southern edge of the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert. Nicholas wrote:

Descending the mountains to the sands of Taklamakan, where you meet only Moslems, Sarts, and Chinese, and where you see the mosques and Chinese temples of Khotan, one would not expect to see anything about Shambhala. And yet, just there we again came upon valuable information. Not far from Khotan, are many ruins of old Buddhist temples and stupas. One of these stupas is identified with the legend, that in the time of Shambhala, a mysterious light will shine from it. It is said that this light has already been seen. 

They finally arrived in Khotan October 14. The  Chinese Taotai (senior official) of the city, a man named Ma Darin, and the Amban (representative of the Chinese government) Chang Fu were friendly at first and George was eager to begin explorations:

Having established our headquarters, we began to plan our scientific and artistic activities in Khotan and its vicinity. The ancient site of Khotan, where from time to time landslides revealed miscellaneous objects and remains of old structures had to be explored. We also planned for a brief expedition to . . . the site of the Rawak stupa where shifting sands had uncovered interesting new remains.

Relations between the expedition and local officials quickly soured. Suspicious of the paintings Nicholas was making and the photographs that members of the expedition were taking, the Taotai accused them all of being spies. Their firearms were seized and the expedition was put under what amounted to house arrest. Nicholas was allowed to continue painting, but only with the confines of the house where the expedition was being held. After interminable arguments with the Taotai and other officials, detailed at length in George’s Trails to Inmost Asia and Nicholas’s Altai-Himalaya, on 27 January 27, 1926. the expedition was allowed to leave Khotan and to proceed to Kashgar, at the western edge of the Tarim Basin. Although they been in Khotan over three months they apparently never got the chance to visit the Rawak Stupa as George had hoped. 

Naturally I wanted to see the celebrated Rawak Stupa for myself, so I flew from Ulaanbaatar 710 miles southeast to Beijing, caught a flight west 1,490 miles to Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, and from there took another flight 615 miles southwest to Khotan. It was a perfectly clear day and halfway across the Tarim Basin, at an altitude of 35,000 feet, I was treated to spectacular views of the Tian Shan, the mountain range to the north, with peaks of up to 24,406 feet, and the Kun Lun Mountains to the south, with peaks of up to 23,514 feet. The Kun Lun mountain range is one of the longest in Asia, stretching for almost 1,900 miles along the southern edge of the Tarim and areas to the east. Although the terrain extending from eastern end of the Tarim Basin is relatively low, from the perspective of 35,000 feet it looked like the two mountain ranges completely encircled the Tarim Basin. I could not help but think of Shambhala, which is said to be surrounded by a ring high snowy mountains. Indeed, the Tarim Basin has often been associated with Shambhala.

Shambhala in the Tarim Basin

Well into the twentieth century scholars were still trying to identify Shambhala with some  actual place now known by a different name. Notes one:

There is a very good chance that Shambhala lies hidden time rather than space—as an ancient kingdom that passed long ago into myth. A number of Western scholars agree with the Dalai Lama's opinion that the Kalacakra teachings must have had an actual place of origin: They think that the teachings probably did come to India in the tenth century from a country somewhere in Central Asia.

Writing the beginning of the twentieth, Sir Charles Eliot (1862–1931), author of Hinduism and Buddhism: An Historical Sketch, wrote:

Pending the publication of the Kâlacakra Tantra [it was not available in English at the time], it is not easy to make definite statements about this school which presumably marks the extreme point of development . . . in Buddhism, but a persistent tradition connects it with a country called Śambhala or Zhambhala, translated in Tibetan as bDe-ḥbyuṇ or source of happiness. This country is seen only through a haze of myth: it may have been in India or it may have been somewhere in Central Asia.

Helmet Hoffman, writing in the 1960s, refined this idea:

The land of Shambhala is undoubtedly somewhere outside India, and originally it was in all probability a real area, whereas as time went on it faded into the idea of a purely mythical kingdom . . . Some of the magically embellished descriptions of the way to this mysterious Shambhala rather suggest Tarim [Basin] in East Turkestan [Xinjiang Province, China] . . . Shambhala is described as being surrounded by snow-capped mountains . . . The connection of the Kâlacakra tradition with a strange Central-Asian land, from which . . . the teachings are said to have been introduced into India, is highly significant. There is also at least a probability that the Kâlacakra existed in areas outside India before it penetrated into the land of Buddha.

According to Ur-Shambhalist Edwin Bernbaum, writing in the early 1980s:

Of all the regions of Central Asia, the Tarim Basin . . . comes closest in size and shape to Tibetan descriptions of Shambhala. A huge oval-shaped area enclosed by the Kun Lun, Pamir, and Tian Shan ranges, it could be viewed as an enormous lotus blossom surrounded by a ring of snow mountains. The small kingdoms that have existed side by side in the numerous oases sprinkled around the fringes of the basin may well have provided the model for the ninety-six principalities of the outer region of Shambhala. These small kingdoms included Kashgar, Yarkand, Loulan, Karashahr, Kucha, the kingdom of Qocho, near Turpan, and Khotan. 

Bernbaum continues:

Until shortly before the Kalacakra reached India and Tibet, Buddhism had been flourishing in the Tarim Basin for nearly eight hundred years. During part of that time, caravans following the silk route to China had brought the outside influences of Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity to bear on the development of Buddhist art and thought in the area. Shambhala may have corresponded historically to the Tarim Basin as a whole or to one of the major oases such as Yarkand, Kashgar, or Khotan. Some scholars have singled out Khotan, the largest and most fertile oasis on the southern rim of the basin. Watered by melting snows of the Kunlun Mountains, it supported a thriving center of Buddhist learning, a people who loved music and culture, and a school of painting that impressed the Chinese and influence Tibetan art. 

Among the productions of this flourishing Buddhist culture was the Rawak Stupa.

Guidebooks to Khotan suggested visiting the Khotan Museum and I thought that this might be a good place to inquire about the stupa. But I could not find the museum. People in the street from whom I tried to get directions were either indifferent or surly. One Uighur woman shouted at me in English: “Go back to England!” I could take the abuse, but being mistaken for an Englishman was downright insulting. Then I was approached by a tall, thin Uighur man in his mid-twenties with shoulder-length black hair, thick mustache, and aviator sunglasses who spoke good English. “How can I help you?” he asked. At first I thought he might be a pimp, but decided to ask about the Rawak Stupa anyhow. He  knew about it and said it was in the desert about twenty miles north of Khotan. I told him I wanted to visit it. “Ah,” he said, “that is a problem. The Rawak Stupa is a Class A Historical Monument and no one is allowed to go there without a guide from the local museum to make sure they don’t damage or steal anything.” And where is the museum I wondered, explaining that I had been unable to find it. The museum, it turns out, had just moved to a brand-new building in a different part of town from the old museum, the one mentioned in my guidebook.  Anyhow, could he arrange a visit to the stupa? He called the museum, talked to the curator, who as it turned out also served as the guide to restricted sites, and found out that he was free at the moment and would be able to accompany me to Rawak Stupa that day. I would, of course, have to pay a fee to the museum. He could also arrange for a four-wheel drive vehicle to drive to the site.  He added that we would have to walk the final two miles or so to the stupa.

The curator is a Uighur man in his mid-thirties. He had studied for several years in Canada and spoke almost perfect English. As we drive northward from Khotan I discovered that he had read in English the accounts of many of the great Occidental explorers of the region, including Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin. He had not, however, read anything by the Roerichs. About ten miles north of the city center the Khotan oasis, lush fields of corn, wheat, rice, cotton, and melons divided by rows of poplar trees, abruptly ends. After a couple of miles of gravelly flats the sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert begin.

Sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert

A mile or so into the desert is a checkpoint with a chain across the road to stop unauthorized access to the stupa site. The curator has a key to the lock. From here there is only a track in the sand.  After five or so more miles the track ends and we set off on foot around the sand dunes.

Proceeding to the Rawak Stupa on foot

Sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert

Sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert

Sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert

After about two miles we come to the stupa. The curator says that it was built circa 150 A.D. (Aurel Stein dated the stupa to the late third to early fourth century). It was probably abandoned around the time of the the arrival of the Islamic Turks in the late tenth century. The Hungarian-born archeologist Aurel Stein rediscovered the stupa half buried in the drifting sands in 1901, as he describes in his Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan.

The Rawak Stupa

The Rawak Stupa

I had brought a copy of Nicholas Roerich’s Shambhala with me and I read a passage to the curator:

In Khotan, the sands cover the remains of Buddhism and yet, in this place, is the great ancient Suburgan, the hope of all Buddhists; because on this spot the Age of Maitreya shall be acclaimed by a mysterious light over the ancient Stupa. 

The curator was unaware of any legends about lights appearing over the stupa or any other unusual phenomenon connected with the site. I asked him what he knew about Shambhala. “You mean the song by Three Dog Night back in the 1970s?” he replied. It turned out he was a big collector of Occidental pop music. In 1973 Shambala had reached Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The lyrics read in part:

Everyone is helpful, everyone is kind

On the road to Shambala

Everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind

On the road to Shambala . . . 

How does your light shine

In the halls of Shambala?

Were the Roerichs aware that Khotan had been singled out by historians as one of the possible sites of Shambhala? Probably. George was a world-class scholar and translator who had studied Asian history, religions, and languages, including Sanskrit and Tibetan, at London University, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Harvard in the USA and would have no doubt been cognizant of research done about the Kalachakra and Shambhala. Thus it was not surprising that Khotan turned up on the itinerary of the expedition. It was just one of the stops on their khora around Shambhala.

For more see In Search of Shambhala: The 1925-1928 Roerich Expedition in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Mongolia | Töv Aimag | Günjiin Süm | Temple of the Peaceful Princess

The 1657 danshig naadam held for Zanabazar at Erdene Zuu after his return from his second trip to Tibet marked the ascension of his influence among his Mongolian followers. As the Russian ethnographer A. Pozdneev points out, “The Gegen’s might in Eastern Khalkha reached its extreme limits at this time; they believed in him and came to him with the most extraordinary requests.” For instance, his nephew Galdandorj, son of the Tüsheet Khan, met with Zanabazar and implored him to cure his wife’s infertility and grant him a son. After numerous such entreaties Zanabazar finally said: 

I know that thou wouldst need a son; therefore when I set out in a miraculous manner for Tibet, I visited there the mountain of the hermits, and in a certain cave I found a lama named Arthasiddha, a reincarnation of Vajrapani. I told him that there was one prince among us who needed a son, and asked him for that; he replied to me that when he had completed his meditation he would be ready to be reborn as the son of that prince. In proof of his fairness, I demanded that he give me an acknowledgement, and I now present it to thee. This lama died today, and his soul ought to be incarnated in the womb of thy wife. 

Galdandorj’s wife did shortly thereafter become pregnant and eventually gave birth to a son who was given the name Dondovdorj. 

After Zanabazar recognized Manchu suzerainty in 1691 the Qing emperor awarded Galdandorj the title of Darkhan Chinwang (Chinese = qinwang, prince of the 1st rank). His son Dondovdorj was brought up in Beijing, in the Qing court of Kangxi, and in 1697 the emperor gave him a princess to marry. Most sources state that the princess, named Khichenguy Amarlinguy, was one of Kangxi’s own daughters, while some maintain she was the daughter of one of the first degree Qing princes. In either case, his marriage led to Dondovdorj’s further advancement in the Qing court, and in 1700, after his father’s death, he too was awarded the title of Darkhan Chinwang, in addition to becoming the new Tüsheet Khan. Dondovdorj was, however, a notorious boozer, a devil-may-care lady’s man, an all-around roisterer, and a poet to boot, and after egregious affronts to public decorum he was finally forced to relinquish both his position as Tüsheet Khan and his Qing title of Darkhan Chinwang. 

Reduced in rank to a second-degree prince, Dondovdorj returned to Mongolia, presumably with his Manchu wife. He eventually distinguished himself on the battlefield and apparently fought against the resurgent Zungarian Mongols who under the leadership of Galdan Bolshigt’s nephew Tsevan Ravdan had invaded Tibet in 1716. 

The Qing emperor Kangxi died in 1722. Zanabazar was in Mongolia at the time of Kangxi’s death. He immediately decided to return to Beijing and pay his respects to Kangxi’s remains, even though he was in his late eighties at the time. Accompanying him was Dondovdorj. The new Qing emperor, Kangxi’s son Yongzheng, forgave Dondovdorj’s previous transgressions and he was again elevated to the title of Darkhan Chinwang. As an additional perk he was given yet another Manchu princess in marriage. 

Not long after his arrival in Beijing Zanabazar fell ill. Sensing that his end might be nearing, his attendants asked him where and under what circumstances he would be reborn. According to tradition, Zanabazar replied, “The second wang [Dondovdorj] should bring into his home a maiden belonging according to birth to the year of the monkey or chicken.” This was interpreted to mean that Dondovdorj was to find a Mongolian girl born in either the year of the monkey or the chicken and that the second Bogd Gegeen would be born to her. Apprised of this prophesy, the emperor Yongzheng gave Dondovdorj permission to immediately return home and seek a new wife. Back in Mongolia Dondovdorj straight away found a nineteen-year old woman named Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu who had been born in the year of the monkey, and just a month or so after his marriage to his second Manchu princess he took her as his third wife. 

Zanabazar himself died in 1723 at the Yellow Temple in Beijing. In 1724, “at daybreak on the first day of the middle of the spring moon in the Wood Dragon year,” a son was born to Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu. In 1728 the boy took his first monastic vows and was given the name Luvsandanbidonme. In 1729 he was declared the Second Bogd Gegeen, the seventeenth incarnation of Javzandamba. 

Dondovdorj’s second Manchu wife faded into the background and nothing more seems to be known of her. To this day, however, numerous folktales exist about the first one, Khichenguy Amarlinguy, who moved to Mongolia to live with her husband and eventually had seven sons by him. “The Peaceful Princess,” as she was called, came to love her adopted country and its people. She considered herself a Mongolian and according to legend she said that when she died she wished to be buried in Mongolia: “It is unnecessary to take my corpse back to China for burial. I became a Mongol person because of being the wife of a Mongol. It is thus necessary to bury me in Mongolia.” 

Yongzheng’s successor, Qianlong, apparently heard about the princess’s wish and after she died in 1739 or 1740 he ordered that a temple be built to hold her remains. Günjiin Süm, as the temple was called, consisted of five parts: a stele tower, the Bogd Entrance, a guard house, the central temple, and the grave of the princess. The complex was heavily damaged in the 1930s, however, and of the guardhouse and the Bogd Entrance now only remnants remain. The stele tower just in front of the entrance to the temple compound has been restored, however, and inside is a stone turtle with a stele mounted on its back bearing an inscription in Chinese and Manchurian, dedicating the temple to “The Peaceful Princess” (in some renderings the “The Quiet Princess”).

The Temple (click on photos for enlargement)

The temple itself was gutted but the shell remains and has been restored to a certain extent. The eight-foot-high brick wall around the temple encompassing a square about 200 feet long on each side is still in fairly good shape on three sides.

North side of the walled compound

The princess’s grave, behind the temple, was reportedly looted in the early thirties not, according to local informants, by communist iconoclasts, but by common thieves looking for gold, silver, and other valuables believed to have been buried with her.

The Peaceful Princess’s Looted Tomb

Researchers examining the site in 1949 found remains of the princess’s sandalwood coffin and what were apparently the ashes of her body, which had been burned by the looters. Next to the coffin was a body of a heavy-set man preserved sitting upright in the lotus position. His identity is unknown. The ashes of the princess have since been scattered to the four winds.

Location: N48°11.009 – E107°33.379, 35.6 miles northeast of Ulaanbaatar as the crow flies and sixty-four miles by road via the tourist center of Terelj; at the upper end of Khökh Chuluutyn Gol, a small tributary of the Dund Bayangiin Gol, which flows into the Tuul River near Terelj. Accessible only by four-wheel drive vehicle, as several small streams north of Terelj must be crossed. In summer it might be necessary to walk the last mile or so because of the swampy road, but in winter, when the ground is frozen, it is possible to drive the whole way, assuming there is not too much snow.

This is an excerpt from The Life of Zanabazar: First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia.

Mongolia | Töv Aimag | Günjiin Süm | Temple of the Peaceful Princess

The 1657 danshig naadam held for Zanabazar at Erdene Zuu after his return from his second trip to Tibet marked the ascension of his influence among his Mongolian followers. As the Russian ethnographer A. Pozdneev points out, “The Gegen’s might in Eastern Khalkha reached its extreme limits at this time; they believed in him and came to him with the most extraordinary requests.” For instance, his nephew Galdandorj, son of the Tüsheet Khan, met with Zanabazar and implored him to cure his wife’s infertility and grant him a son. After numerous such entreaties Zanabazar finally said: 

I know that thou wouldst need a son; therefore when I set out in a miraculous manner for Tibet, I visited there the mountain of the hermits, and in a certain cave I found a lama named Arthasiddha, a reincarnation of Vajrapani. I told him that there was one prince among us who needed a son, and asked him for that; he replied to me that when he had completed his meditation he would be ready to be reborn as the son of that prince. In proof of his fairness, I demanded that he give me an acknowledgement, and I now present it to thee. This lama died today, and his soul ought to be incarnated in the womb of thy wife. 

Galdandorj’s wife did shortly thereafter become pregnant and eventually gave birth to a son who was given the name Dondovdorj. 

After Zanabazar recognized Manchu suzerainty in 1691 the Qing emperor awarded Galdandorj the title of Darkhan Chinwang (Chinese = qinwang, prince of the 1st rank). His son Dondovdorj was brought up in Beijing, in the Qing court of Kangxi, and in 1697 the emperor gave him a princess to marry. Most sources state that the princess, named Khichenguy Amarlinguy, was one of Kangxi’s own daughters, while some maintain she was the daughter of one of the first degree Qing princes. In either case, his marriage led to Dondovdorj’s further advancement in the Qing court, and in 1700, after his father’s death, he too was awarded the title of Darkhan Chinwang, in addition to becoming the new Tüsheet Khan. Dondovdorj was, however, a notorious boozer, a devil-may-care lady’s man, an all-around roisterer, and a poet to boot, and after egregious affronts to public decorum he was finally forced to relinquish both his position as Tüsheet Khan and his Qing title of Darkhan Chinwang. 

Reduced in rank to a second-degree prince, Dondovdorj returned to Mongolia, presumably with his Manchu wife. He eventually distinguished himself on the battlefield and apparently fought against the resurgent Zungarian Mongols who under the leadership of Galdan Bolshigt’s nephew Tsevan Ravdan had invaded Tibet in 1716. 

The Qing emperor Kangxi died in 1722. Zanabazar was in Mongolia at the time of Kangxi’s death. He immediately decided to return to Beijing and pay his respects to Kangxi’s remains, even though he was in his late eighties at the time. Accompanying him was Dondovdorj. The new Qing emperor, Kangxi’s son Yongzheng, forgave Dondovdorj’s previous transgressions and he was again elevated to the title of Darkhan Chinwang. As an additional perk he was given yet another Manchu princess in marriage. 

Not long after his arrival in Beijing Zanabazar fell ill. Sensing that his end might be nearing, his attendants asked him where and under what circumstances he would be reborn. According to tradition, Zanabazar replied, “The second wang [Dondovdorj] should bring into his home a maiden belonging according to birth to the year of the monkey or chicken.” This was interpreted to mean that Dondovdorj was to find a Mongolian girl born in either the year of the monkey or the chicken and that the second Bogd Gegeen would be born to her. Apprised of this prophesy, the emperor Yongzheng gave Dondovdorj permission to immediately return home and seek a new wife. Back in Mongolia Dondovdorj straight away found a nineteen-year old woman named Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu who had been born in the year of the monkey, and just a month or so after his marriage to his second Manchu princess he took her as his third wife. 

Zanabazar himself died in 1723 at the Yellow Temple in Beijing. In 1724, “at daybreak on the first day of the middle of the spring moon in the Wood Dragon year,” a son was born to Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu. In 1728 the boy took his first monastic vows and was given the name Luvsandanbidonme. In 1729 he was declared the Second Bogd Gegeen, the seventeenth incarnation of Javzandamba. 

Dondovdorj’s second Manchu wife faded into the background and nothing more seems to be known of her. To this day, however, numerous folktales exist about the first one, Khichenguy Amarlinguy, who moved to Mongolia to live with her husband and eventually had seven sons by him. “The Peaceful Princess,” as she was called, came to love her adopted country and its people. She considered herself a Mongolian and according to legend she said that when she died she wished to be buried in Mongolia: “It is unnecessary to take my corpse back to China for burial. I became a Mongol person because of being the wife of a Mongol. It is thus necessary to bury me in Mongolia.” 

Yongzheng’s successor, Qianlong, apparently heard about the princess’s wish and after she died in 1739 or 1740 he ordered that a temple be built to hold her remains. Günjiin Süm, as the temple was called, consisted of five parts: a stele tower, the Bogd Entrance, a guard house, the central temple, and the grave of the princess. The complex was heavily damaged in the 1930s, however, and of the guardhouse and the Bogd Entrance now only remnants remain. The stele tower just in front of the entrance to the temple compound has been restored, however, and inside is a stone turtle with a stele mounted on its back bearing an inscription in Chinese and Manchurian, dedicating the temple to “The Peaceful Princess” (in some renderings the “The Quiet Princess”).

The Temple (click on photos for enlargement)

The temple itself was gutted but the shell remains and has been restored to a certain extent. The eight-foot-high brick wall around the temple encompassing a square about 200 feet long on each side is still in fairly good shape on three sides.

North side of the walled compound

The princess’s grave, behind the temple, was reportedly looted in the early thirties not, according to local informants, by communist iconoclasts, but by common thieves looking for gold, silver, and other valuables believed to have been buried with her.

The Peaceful Princess’s Looted Tomb

Researchers examining the site in 1949 found remains of the princess’s sandalwood coffin and what were apparently the ashes of her body, which had been burned by the looters. Next to the coffin was a body of a heavy-set man preserved sitting upright in the lotus position. His identity is unknown. The ashes of the princess have since been scattered to the four winds.

Location: N48°11.009 – E107°33.379, 35.6 miles northeast of Ulaanbaatar as the crow flies and sixty-four miles by road via the tourist center of Terelj; at the upper end of Khökh Chuluutyn Gol, a small tributary of the Dund Bayangiin Gol, which flows into the Tuul River near Terelj. Accessible only by four-wheel drive vehicle, as several small streams north of Terelj must be crossed. In summer it might be necessary to walk the last mile or so because of the swampy road, but in winter, when the ground is frozen, it is possible to drive the whole way, assuming there is not too much snow.

This is an excerpt from The Life of Zanabazar: First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia.

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Bilegt the Wrestler’s Rock

As we wander past the northern side of the Eej Khairkan Uul my driver Chültem points out an immense sugar loaf-shaped smooth-sided pinnacle at the northwestern corner of the massif. Several years ago, he says, a group of Russian rock climbers came here and attempted to tried to scale this pinnacle. One of the climbers fell to his death. Chültem says the climber got what he deserved for violating the sanctity of this sacred mountain. Mongolians, he says, never attempt to ascend any part of the Eej Khairkhan massif. 

Eej Khairkan Uul

West of Eej Khairkhan we cross an immense, perfectly flat area that extends the whole way to the horizon far to the west. This expanse is completely covered with flat nickel-sized black stones. I cannot fathom what geological forces so uniformly graded these stones and deposited them on a surface as flat as a billiards table.

 
Eventually we turned north begin to climb through desert steppe which ramps up to the east-west trending Tayangiin Mountains. To the northwest rises what Chültem calls the Big Tayangiin, crowned by 10,575' Gyalgariin Oroi Uul. To the northeast is the Little Tayangiin, topped by several eight and nine thousand foot peaks. From the sloping steppe the road winds higher into the buttresses of the Tayangiyn. Rounding a hairpin curve we suddenly come upon a roadside monument which I at first take to be an ovoo marking the pass through the mountains. Instead of one high pile of rocks, however, there is a big cubical rock measuring perhaps a yard on each side and draped with prayer scarves. Surrounding it are a couple dozen piles of rocks two feet or so high. This is not the pass, Chültem explains as we climb out of the jeep. The big rock was carried here by the celebrated wrestler Bilegt and the rock piles—small ovoos actually—are memorials to this prodigious feet. 

Bilegt was from near Tseel, the village nineteen miles farther north. He was a huge man and famously strong, but he wanted above all to be renowned as a wrestler. At the time—apparently around the turn of the century, although the chronology is a bit vague—the most important wrestling matches were held in Uliastai, in Zavkhan aimag north of Gov-Altai aimag, and many of the most prominent wrestlers came from Zavkhan. Not sure that he was ready to take on the champions from Zavkhan Bilegt began a concerted training program. Holding a large section of a tree trunk in his arms he walked greater and greater distances until he was able to carry them from near Tseel to the pass through these mountains, a distance of some eighteen miles. Still he felt he needed one final test of strength. Spying a huge cube of rock near the pass he picked it up and carried it at least 500 feet. The rock remains to this day where he finally dropped it. 

Chültem with Bilegt’s rock

Bilegt went to Uliastai, beat all the competition, and was lauded all over Mongolia. Even when his wrestling days were over he was remembered as the man who had once carried the huge rock now resting near the pass through the Tayangiin Mountains. When he died his body, as was the custom then, was not buried but simply tossed into an isolated ravine where his bones were stripped clean by vultures and wild animals. According to local lore a she-wolf eventually gave birth to a litter of pups in his enormous rib cage. Later some men from Ulaangom in Uvs aimag found this rib cage and took it back to Ulaangom. Bilegt’s great powers were somehow conveyed with his bones, and since then Uvs aimag has supplied Mongolia with its strongest and best wrestlers, or so goes the story.

 
I suppose someone could calculate roughly how much a cubic yard of solid rock weighs. Chültem says that to this day no one has ever been able to lift it. He and I together cannot even rock it back and forth. I add a few fist-sized rocks to the small ovoos and we continue on. Bilegt’s stone is at an elevation of 7280'. The pass through the Tayangiin Mountains—Nakhis Davaa—is a mile and half farther on at an elevation of 7450'. Here there is the de rigueur ovoo where we make a brief stop and I place a blue prayer scarf to commemorate our leaving the basin of Zakhny Zarmangiin Gov with its lonely mistress, Eej Khairkhan Uul.

On the other side of the pass are steep cliffs that Chültem says are famous for garnets. We get out to look and sure enough within ten minutes we find several red garnets embedded in rocks. I take one as a souvenir. Finally we reached the tiny town of Tseel. Like Tsogt, Tseel is supposedly famous for its beautiful women. According to Chültem, Dambijantsan, the Ja Lama, also came to Tseel and carried off one of these beauties and added her to his harem. 

We had planned to camp outside of Tseel. By then the wind was blowing an unrelenting forty or fifty miles miles a hour. No one wanted to make the first move to erect the tents, and the idea of preparing a meal on our primitive Russian primus stoves was daunting,  so we just sat silently in the jeep brooding on what looked like a long, cold, uncomfortable night. 
“I guess we could go stay at the hotel in Tseel,” Ochoo finally allowed.
“What!” I sputtered, “There’s a hotel in Tseel!?”
“Yes, Chültem told me about it, but he didn’t think you would want to stay there.”
It turned out that Dr. Terbish back in Ulaanbaatar, who had arranged the jeep trip, had told Chültem that I was a penny-pinching nature lover who invariably avoided towns and hotels and preferred to stay always in my own tent under the stars. 
“To the hotel!” I ordered. 
“It’s probably very dirty, and it might be expensive,” Ochoo offered
“I don’t care if I have to share a stall with cattle as long as it’s out of the wind, and how expensive can a hotel in Tseel be? To the hotel!

The “hotel” was in a courtyard surrounded by a high wooden fence. The  gate was locked, but a woman holding an immense, decidedly unfriendly looking black mastiff by the collar finally answered our shouts and let us in. Next to her small abode house is a barn-like structure containing four or five rooms for rent.  All but one are “under repair” at the moment. There’s no running water, no meals, and the price for the available room is 1500 tögrögs a head. 
“That’s very expensive,” mumbles Ochoo. 

“Four thousand five hundred tögrögs for the three of us ( $5.50 at the time). I can afford it. We’re staying,” say I.

The room features a couple of broken-down chairs, three beds with springs but no mattresses, a wood stove, and a large table. True, the place may not have felt a broom in the last decade or so, but other than that it is quite cozy. Our hostess comes in with a quart of brackish water for us to wash up with; sweet water, it appears, is at a premium in Tseel. She soon has a saxual wood fire going in the small stove in the corner of the room. We make tea with our own drinking water from the artisian well near Bayan Toogoi. Our hostess takes a seat on one of the beds and settles in for a long chat.

First she explains that the outhouse is in the far corner of the courtyard, and I immediately imagine a late night encounter with the immense mastiff. As if reading my mind she adds that she will tie the dog. She says that Tseel is a relatively new town, founded probably in 1917 or thereabouts as a hiding place from bandits and renegades whom Xinjiang Province in China who were at the time terrorized southern Gov-Altai Aimag. The town is a pleasant place, she says, cool in summer, unlike the Gobi Desert to the south, and surrounded by good grass for livestock. The only drawback is the lack of pure, sweet water, although residents by now have accustomed themselves to the slightest brackish water in the wells. 

Then the lights go out. It’s eight o’clock, when the electricity for the town is turned off. Electricity the entire night is a luxury in which the citizens of Tseel do not indulge. Candles are produced and we are soon huddled around a candle-light dinner of hot tea, bread we had bought in Bayan Tolgoi, sausage, thick white slabs of pork fat, and cheese. Upon arriving at the hotel our hostess had said no meals were available, but after a scornful glance at our meager repast she retired to her house and fifteen minutes later returned with three heaping plates of tsuivan (fried mutton and homemade noodles). I offered to pay her for the tsuivan, but she just shrugged this off. After the big meal I retired to my bed and slept the sleep of the just. 

Breakfast is the same as dinner the night, minus the tsuivan from our hostess, except there’s no bread. I had carelessly failed to seal the bread bag properly and during the night mice had devoured it all. Our host offered up some  boortsog (fried bread) made just that morning and still warm. Before leaving we gifted her our last twenty liters of delicious sweet water from the artisanal well in Bayan Tooroi. Again Chültem said not to worry; there’s water on the way back to Altai.

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Bilegt the Wrestler’s Rock

As we wander past the northern side of the Eej Khairkan Uul my driver Chültem points out an immense sugar loaf-shaped smooth-sided pinnacle at the northwestern corner of the massif. Several years ago, he says, a group of Russian rock climbers came here and attempted to tried to scale this pinnacle. One of the climbers fell to his death. Chültem says the climber got what he deserved for violating the sanctity of this sacred mountain. Mongolians, he says, never attempt to ascend any part of the Eej Khairkhan massif. 

Eej Khairkan Uul

West of Eej Khairkhan we cross an immense, perfectly flat area that extends the whole way to the horizon far to the west. This expanse is completely covered with flat nickel-sized black stones. I cannot fathom what geological forces so uniformly graded these stones and deposited them on a surface as flat as a billiards table.

 
Eventually we turned north begin to climb through desert steppe which ramps up to the east-west trending Tayangiin Mountains. To the northwest rises what Chültem calls the Big Tayangiin, crowned by 10,575' Gyalgariin Oroi Uul. To the northeast is the Little Tayangiin, topped by several eight and nine thousand foot peaks. From the sloping steppe the road winds higher into the buttresses of the Tayangiyn. Rounding a hairpin curve we suddenly come upon a roadside monument which I at first take to be an ovoo marking the pass through the mountains. Instead of one high pile of rocks, however, there is a big cubical rock measuring perhaps a yard on each side and draped with prayer scarves. Surrounding it are a couple dozen piles of rocks two feet or so high. This is not the pass, Chültem explains as we climb out of the jeep. The big rock was carried here by the celebrated wrestler Bilegt and the rock piles—small ovoos actually—are memorials to this prodigious feet. 

Bilegt was from near Tseel, the village nineteen miles farther north. He was a huge man and famously strong, but he wanted above all to be renowned as a wrestler. At the time—apparently around the turn of the century, although the chronology is a bit vague—the most important wrestling matches were held in Uliastai, in Zavkhan aimag north of Gov-Altai aimag, and many of the most prominent wrestlers came from Zavkhan. Not sure that he was ready to take on the champions from Zavkhan Bilegt began a concerted training program. Holding a large section of a tree trunk in his arms he walked greater and greater distances until he was able to carry them from near Tseel to the pass through these mountains, a distance of some eighteen miles. Still he felt he needed one final test of strength. Spying a huge cube of rock near the pass he picked it up and carried it at least 500 feet. The rock remains to this day where he finally dropped it. 

Chültem with Bilegt’s rock

Bilegt went to Uliastai, beat all the competition, and was lauded all over Mongolia. Even when his wrestling days were over he was remembered as the man who had once carried the huge rock now resting near the pass through the Tayangiin Mountains. When he died his body, as was the custom then, was not buried but simply tossed into an isolated ravine where his bones were stripped clean by vultures and wild animals. According to local lore a she-wolf eventually gave birth to a litter of pups in his enormous rib cage. Later some men from Ulaangom in Uvs aimag found this rib cage and took it back to Ulaangom. Bilegt’s great powers were somehow conveyed with his bones, and since then Uvs aimag has supplied Mongolia with its strongest and best wrestlers, or so goes the story.

 
I suppose someone could calculate roughly how much a cubic yard of solid rock weighs. Chültem says that to this day no one has ever been able to lift it. He and I together cannot even rock it back and forth. I add a few fist-sized rocks to the small ovoos and we continue on. Bilegt’s stone is at an elevation of 7280'. The pass through the Tayangiin Mountains—Nakhis Davaa—is a mile and half farther on at an elevation of 7450'. Here there is the de rigueur ovoo where we make a brief stop and I place a blue prayer scarf to commemorate our leaving the basin of Zakhny Zarmangiin Gov with its lonely mistress, Eej Khairkhan Uul.

On the other side of the pass are steep cliffs that Chültem says are famous for garnets. We get out to look and sure enough within ten minutes we find several red garnets embedded in rocks. I take one as a souvenir. Finally we reached the tiny town of Tseel. Like Tsogt, Tseel is supposedly famous for its beautiful women. According to Chültem, Dambijantsan, the Ja Lama, also came to Tseel and carried off one of these beauties and added her to his harem. 

We had planned to camp outside of Tseel. By then the wind was blowing an unrelenting forty or fifty miles miles a hour. No one wanted to make the first move to erect the tents, and the idea of preparing a meal on our primitive Russian primus stoves was daunting,  so we just sat silently in the jeep brooding on what looked like a long, cold, uncomfortable night. 
“I guess we could go stay at the hotel in Tseel,” Ochoo finally allowed.
“What!” I sputtered, “There’s a hotel in Tseel!?”
“Yes, Chültem told me about it, but he didn’t think you would want to stay there.”
It turned out that Dr. Terbish back in Ulaanbaatar, who had arranged the jeep trip, had told Chültem that I was a penny-pinching nature lover who invariably avoided towns and hotels and preferred to stay always in my own tent under the stars. 
“To the hotel!” I ordered. 
“It’s probably very dirty, and it might be expensive,” Ochoo offered
“I don’t care if I have to share a stall with cattle as long as it’s out of the wind, and how expensive can a hotel in Tseel be? To the hotel!

The “hotel” was in a courtyard surrounded by a high wooden fence. The  gate was locked, but a woman holding an immense, decidedly unfriendly looking black mastiff by the collar finally answered our shouts and let us in. Next to her small abode house is a barn-like structure containing four or five rooms for rent.  All but one are “under repair” at the moment. There’s no running water, no meals, and the price for the available room is 1500 tögrögs a head. 
“That’s very expensive,” mumbles Ochoo. 

“Four thousand five hundred tögrögs for the three of us ( $5.50 at the time). I can afford it. We’re staying,” say I.

The room features a couple of broken-down chairs, three beds with springs but no mattresses, a wood stove, and a large table. True, the place may not have felt a broom in the last decade or so, but other than that it is quite cozy. Our hostess comes in with a quart of brackish water for us to wash up with; sweet water, it appears, is at a premium in Tseel. She soon has a saxual wood fire going in the small stove in the corner of the room. We make tea with our own drinking water from the artisian well near Bayan Toogoi. Our hostess takes a seat on one of the beds and settles in for a long chat.

First she explains that the outhouse is in the far corner of the courtyard, and I immediately imagine a late night encounter with the immense mastiff. As if reading my mind she adds that she will tie the dog. She says that Tseel is a relatively new town, founded probably in 1917 or thereabouts as a hiding place from bandits and renegades whom Xinjiang Province in China who were at the time terrorized southern Gov-Altai Aimag. The town is a pleasant place, she says, cool in summer, unlike the Gobi Desert to the south, and surrounded by good grass for livestock. The only drawback is the lack of pure, sweet water, although residents by now have accustomed themselves to the slightest brackish water in the wells. 

Then the lights go out. It’s eight o’clock, when the electricity for the town is turned off. Electricity the entire night is a luxury in which the citizens of Tseel do not indulge. Candles are produced and we are soon huddled around a candle-light dinner of hot tea, bread we had bought in Bayan Tolgoi, sausage, thick white slabs of pork fat, and cheese. Upon arriving at the hotel our hostess had said no meals were available, but after a scornful glance at our meager repast she retired to her house and fifteen minutes later returned with three heaping plates of tsuivan (fried mutton and homemade noodles). I offered to pay her for the tsuivan, but she just shrugged this off. After the big meal I retired to my bed and slept the sleep of the just. 

Breakfast is the same as dinner the night, minus the tsuivan from our hostess, except there’s no bread. I had carelessly failed to seal the bread bag properly and during the night mice had devoured it all. Our host offered up some  boortsog (fried bread) made just that morning and still warm. Before leaving we gifted her our last twenty liters of delicious sweet water from the artisanal well in Bayan Tooroi. Again Chültem said not to worry; there’s water on the way back to Altai.