Turkey | Istanbul | Vezir Han

During my last sojourn in Istanbul I wandered through numerous Caravanserias in The Neighborhood of the Grand Bazaar. The door to the Vezir Han, one of Istanbul’s biggest hans, or caravanserais, at the corner of Vezirhan Street and Divan Yolu, was closed that day, however, and I was not able to peek inside. My first free day back in the Red Apple I ventured up Divan Yolu for another look. This time the door was open.

Three story exterior of the Vezir Kan

A long gallery leads through the outer facade of the caravanserai to the inner courtyard, surrounded by a two-story gallery. 

Galley leading through outer and inner walls to the courtyard

Two-story Inner Arcade

This caravanserai dates to the 1630s and thus may have caught the very tail end of the Pax Mongolica which had once again opened the Silk Road from Xian in China to Istanbul. These caravanserais served both as hotels were merchants could stay and warehouses and storerooms for the goods they had brought with them to sell. Many of the goods they had were probably sold to wholesalers right on the premises. In the big open courtyard, here at the Vezir Han over 200 feet square, camels and horses were uploaded of their goods and tied. In the middle of the courtyard there was often a small mosque, absent here, unless it was once in the little building which now houses a cafe for local tradesmen and workers. The first floor of the surrounding building had windowless rooms used as storage rooms and stables.  Staircases led to the second floor where merchants stayed in rented rooms.

Staircase leading to rooms on the second floor

A corner of the courtyard

It was early in the morning on a weekday and there was not a single person in the courtyard. Despite all the traffic outside on busy Divan Yolu it was uncannily quiet here within the enclosed precincts of the caravanserai. I sat down on the stone steps at the inner of the entranceway and soon fell into a revelry. In my mind’s eye it was night and a balsamic moon hung in the sky over one of the corners of the caravanserai. In the courtyard were twenty camels still tied in a string. They brayed and snorted at the camel men shouted at them, making then kneel down, first on their front knees, and then slowing bending their back legs into a full siting position. The camel men quickly unlashed their loads, huge wooden boxes and leather packs, and other men carted the baggage into the storage rooms. Under one of the arched openings in the second floor facade stood the merchant who had organized the caravan, which came from the old city of Xacitarxan, near current day Astrakhan, on the Volga River north of the Caspian Sea, in the kingdom of Khazaria. Beside him stood the caravan boss, shouting orders at the baggage handlers down below. Most of the goods had come from farther east, however, and had only be trans-shipped from Xacitarxan. There were bundles of  incredibly fine wool known as targhu, made from the wool of white camels, each length worth fifty or more dinars, which had originated from the desert steppes north of the Gobi-Altai Mountains in Mongolia and had traveled south, passing by Amarbuyant Monastery and Shar Khuls Oasis before crossing the Black Gobi and linking up with the main trunk of the Silk Road at Anxi. Other big boxes were stuffed with bundles of tightly rolled Atlas Silk from Khotan on the southern edge of the the Tarim Depression in East Turkestan. Huge tightly stitched leather bags held bags of the legendarily sweet and flavorful honey from the lush Ili Valley, north of the Tian Shan. There was much else and it would take all night to sort and store the goods.



Meanwhile the tantalizing aroma of cumin-seasoned mutton grilled over hot coals drifted through the courtyard, managing even to overpower the smell of camel dung. The merchant and caravan man retired to one of the small dining rooms and drank green tea and ate the mutton along with rice seasoned with Iranian saffron. News of their arrival had reached the merchants of the nearby Grand Bazaar, one of the largest trade emporiums in the world, and a few men had already slipped into the dining room and were inquiring about their goods, hoping to beat out their competitors who were already fast asleep. It was going to be a long night. 

A motorcyle with a big bundle of carpets draped on the bumper behind the driver roared into the courtyard, interrupting this nostalgic vision. The scene I had conjured up had been so real that I could almost believe that I had been here long before and witnessed it myself. Shaking off this fantasy I went outside and treated myself to a Turkish coffee with sugar. It was only seven in the morning and I had a long day ahead of me.

Vezir Khan 

Turkey | Istanbul | Vezir Han

During my last sojourn in Istanbul I wandered through numerous Caravanserias in The Neighborhood of the Grand Bazaar. The door to the Vezir Han, one of Istanbul’s biggest hans, or caravanserais, at the corner of Vezirhan Street and Divan Yolu, was closed that day, however, and I was not able to peek inside. My first free day back in the Red Apple I ventured up Divan Yolu for another look. This time the door was open.

Three story exterior of the Vezir Kan

A long gallery leads through the outer facade of the caravanserai to the inner courtyard, surrounded by a two-story gallery. 

Galley leading through outer and inner walls to the courtyard

Two-story Inner Arcade

This caravanserai dates to the 1630s and thus may have caught the very tail end of the Pax Mongolica which had once again opened the Silk Road from Xian in China to Istanbul. These caravanserais served both as hotels were merchants could stay and warehouses and storerooms for the goods they had brought with them to sell. Many of the goods they had were probably sold to wholesalers right on the premises. In the big open courtyard, here at the Vezir Han over 200 feet square, camels and horses were uploaded of their goods and tied. In the middle of the courtyard there was often a small mosque, absent here, unless it was once in the little building which now houses a cafe for local tradesmen and workers. The first floor of the surrounding building had windowless rooms used as storage rooms and stables.  Staircases led to the second floor where merchants stayed in rented rooms.

Staircase leading to rooms on the second floor

A corner of the courtyard

It was early in the morning on a weekday and there was not a single person in the courtyard. Despite all the traffic outside on busy Divan Yolu it was uncannily quiet here within the enclosed precincts of the caravanserai. I sat down on the stone steps at the inner of the entranceway and soon fell into a revelry. In my mind’s eye it was night and a balsamic moon hung in the sky over one of the corners of the caravanserai. In the courtyard were twenty camels still tied in a string. They brayed and snorted at the camel men shouted at them, making then kneel down, first on their front knees, and then slowing bending their back legs into a full siting position. The camel men quickly unlashed their loads, huge wooden boxes and leather packs, and other men carted the baggage into the storage rooms. Under one of the arched openings in the second floor facade stood the merchant who had organized the caravan, which came from the old city of Xacitarxan, near current day Astrakhan, on the Volga River north of the Caspian Sea, in the kingdom of Khazaria. Beside him stood the caravan boss, shouting orders at the baggage handlers down below. Most of the goods had come from farther east, however, and had only be trans-shipped from Xacitarxan. There were bundles of  incredibly fine wool known as targhu, made from the wool of white camels, each length worth fifty or more dinars, which had originated from the desert steppes north of the Gobi-Altai Mountains in Mongolia and had traveled south, passing by Amarbuyant Monastery and Shar Khuls Oasis before crossing the Black Gobi and linking up with the main trunk of the Silk Road at Anxi. Other big boxes were stuffed with bundles of tightly rolled Atlas Silk from Khotan on the southern edge of the the Tarim Depression in East Turkestan. Huge tightly stitched leather bags held bags of the legendarily sweet and flavorful honey from the lush Ili Valley, north of the Tian Shan. There was much else and it would take all night to sort and store the goods.

Meanwhile the tantalizing aroma of cumin-seasoned mutton grilled over hot coals drifted through the courtyard, managing even to overpower the smell of camel dung. The merchant and caravan man retired to one of the small dining rooms and drank green tea and ate the mutton along with rice seasoned with Iranian saffron. News of their arrival had reached the merchants of the nearby Grand Bazaar, one of the largest trade emporiums in the world, and a few men had already slipped into the dining room and were inquiring about their goods, hoping to beat out their competitors who were already fast asleep. It was going to be a long night. 

A motorcyle with a big bundle of carpets draped on the bumper behind the driver roared into the courtyard, interrupting this nostalgic vision. The scene I had conjured up had been so real that I could almost believe that I had been here long before and witnessed it myself. Shaking off this fantasy I went outside and treated myself to a Turkish coffee with sugar. It was only seven in the morning and I had a long day ahead of me.

Vezir Khan 

Turkey | Istanbul | Mehmed II and Hagia Sofia

I suppose everyone has had the experience of waking up in a place other than one’s usual abode and experiencing momentary befuddlement as to where one actually was. Such a feeling often happens while traveling. The period of mental discombobulation lasts five or at most ten seconds and then it suddenly dawns on one that of course you are in this or that place. But this experience was lasting longer. I awoke in a small room, laying full clothed in narrow single bed on top of a red bedspread. The windows were covered by white curtains and there was a tall dresser of blonde wood along one of the walls. On a floor was a large suitcase with the top flung open. Obviously this was not my sleeping den in my beloved hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi. But where was I? My mind drew an absolute and complete blank. I tried to concentrate my thoughts. When I had last been in Zaisan Tolgoi? Why was I no longer there? My immediate past seemed to have disappeared completely. A disconcerting panic began to well up in my mind. I threw back the curtains at one of the windows and beheld a courtyard surrounded by large trees bedecked with fully grown leaves. Obviously this was not Mongolia where I imagined that I should be. Again I tried to focus. Why was I not in Mongolia? How had I left Mongolia and where could I possibly be? The thought suddenly arose that perhaps I had died. Was I in Heaven? Or perhaps, Heaven forbid, Hell? My panic crescendoed as this state of utter mental confusion went on for at least forty-five seconds, possibly even a minute.

Then it dawned on me very suddenly. I was in Istanbul, Turkey, in a room at the Kervan Guesthouse, next to the entrance to the Basilica Cistern, directly across the street from Hagia Sofia, for over thousand or so years the largest church in the world, and now the axis mundi of the tourism in the city.  I had flown here from Ulaan Baatar via Beijing. The plane from Ulaan Baatar to Beijing was three hours late and I had caught the Beijing to Istanbul flight when it was already boarding. For ten hours we had flown westward following very roughly the course of the main trunk of the old Silk Road: from Beijing westward over the Gansu Corridor, then over Xinjiang and southern Kazakstan, passing right over the Aral Sea and the northern part of the Caspian Sea, then Georgia and the Caucasus to the northern shore of the Black Sea, which we then followed the whole way into Istanbul. 

I soon discovered that my luggage had not made the transfer to the final leg of my flight, which was not surprising, since I myself had barely made it. It was still in Beijing. As I was sitting in Turkish Airlines office filling out a lost luggage report a public service announcement came on: “Don Croner please report to the Information Desk. Don Croner please report to the information desk . . .”  I got the forms filled out as quickly as possible and hurried to the Information Desk. The owner of the Kervan Guesthouse, the esteemed Mr. Turgut Bataray, had sent someone to pick me up but having waiting almost an hour for me this person concluded that I was not coming and had already left. I took a cab to  the Sultanahmed district of Istanbul where the questhouse is located and checked in. It was still very early in the morning so I thought I would just lay down and rest for a bit before going out to look for breakfast. Not surprisingly, since I had taken only a brief catnap on the all night flight, I immediately fell asleep, later waking in my befuddled state. 

It was May 29th, the day Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. I had flown to Istanbul to commemorate this day with a visit to Hagia Sofia, which played a special role on that fateful day. As you know, Hagia Sofia was dedicated on December 26, 537, by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. For 916 years it served as an Orthodox cathedral and had acquired a reputation as one of the great architectural monuments in the world. On the late afternoon of May 29th, 1453,  the twenty-one year-old Sultan Mehmed II at the head of the Ottoman armies which had just conquered Constantinople after a prolonged siege rode through the street of the defeated city to the doors of the Hagia Sofia. Here he dismounted and gathering a handful of dust sprinkled it on his head as an act of humility before the Face of God. That very day he converted Haghia Sofia into a mosque, and Constantinople, the city  named after the Byzantine emperor Constantine, became Istanbul. 

The guesthouse is full and all the nearby cafes are packed with people. I asked the waiter if many of these people had come to Istanbul to commemorate the fall the old city in 1453. He seemed a bit surprised that I would ask about this. Almost everyone—here he indicated the patrons of his restaurant with a sweep of his arm—are with tour groups who are attending the Formula I motor car races being held this weekend on the Asian side of the Bosporus Strait. They take ferries over in the morning, spend the day watching the races, then return to the European side in the evenings. Was I here for the Formula I races, the waiter asked me? No, I said, I did not know about the Formula I races. I had flown from Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia the night before to commemorate the day Constantinople had fallen to Sultan Mehmud  and the Ottomans. The waiter just shrugged and walked away. He no doubt meets a lot of strange people working in a place like this. 

Hagia Sofia

Interior of Hagia Sofia

Pulpit installed in Hagia Sofia after it became a mosque

The Blue Mosque, across the square from Hagia Sofia

Turkey | Istanbul | Mehmed II and Hagia Sofia

I suppose everyone has had the experience of waking up in a place other than one’s usual abode and experiencing momentary befuddlement as to where one actually was. Such a feeling often happens while traveling. The period of mental discombobulation lasts five or at most ten seconds and then it suddenly dawns on one that of course you are in this or that place. But this experience was lasting longer. I awoke in a small room, laying full clothed in narrow single bed on top of a red bedspread. The windows were covered by white curtains and there was a tall dresser of blonde wood along one of the walls. On a floor was a large suitcase with the top flung open. Obviously this was not my sleeping den in my beloved hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi. But where was I? My mind drew an absolute and complete blank. I tried to concentrate my thoughts. When I had last been in Zaisan Tolgoi? Why was I no longer there? My immediate past seemed to have disappeared completely. A disconcerting panic began to well up in my mind. I threw back the curtains at one of the windows and beheld a courtyard surrounded by large trees bedecked with fully grown leaves. Obviously this was not Mongolia where I imagined that I should be. Again I tried to focus. Why was I not in Mongolia? How had I left Mongolia and where could I possibly be? The thought suddenly arose that perhaps I had died. Was I in Heaven? Or perhaps, Heaven forbid, Hell? My panic crescendoed as this state of utter mental confusion went on for at least forty-five seconds, possibly even a minute.

Then it dawned on me very suddenly. I was in Istanbul, Turkey, in a room at the Kervan Guesthouse, next to the entrance to the Basilica Cistern, directly across the street from Hagia Sofia, for over thousand or so years the largest church in the world, and now the axis mundi of the tourism in the city.  I had flown here from Ulaan Baatar via Beijing. The plane from Ulaan Baatar to Beijing was three hours late and I had caught the Beijing to Istanbul flight when it was already boarding. For ten hours we had flown westward following very roughly the course of the main trunk of the old Silk Road: from Beijing westward over the Gansu Corridor, then over Xinjiang and southern Kazakstan, passing right over the Aral Sea and the northern part of the Caspian Sea, then Georgia and the Caucasus to the northern shore of the Black Sea, which we then followed the whole way into Istanbul. 

I soon discovered that my luggage had not made the transfer to the final leg of my flight, which was not surprising, since I myself had barely made it. It was still in Beijing. As I was sitting in Turkish Airlines office filling out a lost luggage report a public service announcement came on: “Don Croner please report to the Information Desk. Don Croner please report to the information desk . . .”  I got the forms filled out as quickly as possible and hurried to the Information Desk. The owner of the Kervan Guesthouse, the esteemed Mr. Turgut Bataray, had sent someone to pick me up but having waiting almost an hour for me this person concluded that I was not coming and had already left. I took a cab to  the Sultanahmed district of Istanbul where the questhouse is located and checked in. It was still very early in the morning so I thought I would just lay down and rest for a bit before going out to look for breakfast. Not surprisingly, since I had taken only a brief catnap on the all night flight, I immediately fell asleep, later waking in my befuddled state. 

It was May 29th, the day Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. I had flown to Istanbul to commemorate this day with a visit to Hagia Sofia, which played a special role on that fateful day. As you know, Hagia Sofia was dedicated on December 26, 537, by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. For 916 years it served as an Orthodox cathedral and had acquired a reputation as one of the great architectural monuments in the world. On the late afternoon of May 29th, 1453,  the twenty-one year-old Sultan Mehmed II at the head of the Ottoman armies which had just conquered Constantinople after a prolonged siege rode through the street of the defeated city to the doors of the Hagia Sofia. Here he dismounted and gathering a handful of dust sprinkled it on his head as an act of humility before the Face of God. That very day he converted Haghia Sofia into a mosque, and Constantinople, the city  named after the Byzantine emperor Constantine, became Istanbul. 

The guesthouse is full and all the nearby cafes are packed with people. I asked the waiter if many of these people had come to Istanbul to commemorate the fall the old city in 1453. He seemed a bit surprised that I would ask about this. Almost everyone—here he indicated the patrons of his restaurant with a sweep of his arm—are with tour groups who are attending the Formula I motor car races being held this weekend on the Asian side of the Bosporus Strait. They take ferries over in the morning, spend the day watching the races, then return to the European side in the evenings. Was I here for the Formula I races, the waiter asked me? No, I said, I did not know about the Formula I races. I had flown from Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia the night before to commemorate the day Constantinople had fallen to Sultan Mehmud  and the Ottomans. The waiter just shrugged and walked away. He no doubt meets a lot of strange people working in a place like this. 

Hagia Sofia

Interior of Hagia Sofia

Pulpit installed in Hagia Sofia after it became a mosque

The Blue Mosque, across the square from Hagia Sofia

AppleWorld | Shambhala | George Gurdjieff

Who Will Replace Steve Jobs as Gestalt Fuehrer When He Dies? manages to mention Steve Jobs, George Gurdjieff, and Shambhala in the same breath. Interestingly, speculation on Stephen Jobs re-incarnation has already began, even though he has not transmigrated yet (assuming his last appearance at the iPad Wingding was not a hologram):

Jobs may have subscribed to the Buddhist school of egotism, exemplified in George Gurdjieff's book Life is Real, Only When I Am. According to that school, a place called Shambhala, in Tibet, is where the Masters (Fuehrers) of the marketing universe held sway . . . Is he like the Dalai Lama, and someone will find a creature somewhere in the world who shows all the characteristics of a Steve Jobs by seeing whether his fingers do the walking past the Beatles' albums and Xerox Palo Alto ideas? 

AppleWorld | Shambhala | George Gurdjieff

Who Will Replace Steve Jobs as Gestalt Fuehrer When He Dies? manages to mention Steve Jobs, George Gurdjieff, and Shambhala in the same breath. Interestingly, speculation on Stephen Jobs re-incarnation has already began, even though he has not transmigrated yet (assuming his last appearance at the iPad Wingding was not a hologram):

Jobs may have subscribed to the Buddhist school of egotism, exemplified in George Gurdjieff's book Life is Real, Only When I Am. According to that school, a place called Shambhala, in Tibet, is where the Masters (Fuehrers) of the marketing universe held sway . . . Is he like the Dalai Lama, and someone will find a creature somewhere in the world who shows all the characteristics of a Steve Jobs by seeing whether his fingers do the walking past the Beatles' albums and Xerox Palo Alto ideas? 

Mongolia | Ulaan Baatar | Full Moon| | Shambhala

Yesterday, April 28 (Gregorian Calendar), was the Full Moon of Caitra (March-April), the first month of the year according to  the much more relevant Kalachakra Calendar. As you know, this was the day on which the Buddha taught the Kalachakra Tantra to Suchandra, the first of the Kings of Shambhala. 

Suchandra (reigned 977 BC – 877 BC)

Wandered on up to Gandan Monastery for the All-Day Puja held to celebrate this auspicious day. 

Approaching Gandan

Lama on his way to Puja

Wandering into the Kalachakra Temple, where the Puja was held, I viewed the Kalachakra Mandala Made of Sand and the Kalachakra Thangkas, then sat for two hours listening to the chanting. 

Kalachakra Temple (right) and Janraisig Temple

According to tradition, while the Buddha was in his physical body at Vulture’s Peak in India delivering the Prajnaparamita Sutra he bi-located in south India, at a place called the Dhanyakataka Stupa, and taught the Kalachakra to Suchandra, who had traveling to India from The Kingdom of Shambhala somewhere in the north specifically to receive these teachings.

Vulture’s Peak in India 

It is generally believed that the name of the capital of Mongolia, Ulaan Baatar (Red Warrior), refers to the Bolshevik fighters who established socialism in Mongolia in the 1920s. This is only the exoteric meaning of the name, however. According to local Shambhalists the name actually refers to the Red Warrior (sometimes identified as Jamsran) who guards the Portals to Shambhala. Thus the city itself, and by extension most of Mongolia, is considered by some to be a Portal to Shambhala. This is why the Full Moon of Caitra (April 28 this year) is such an important day in Mongolia. There are, of course, those who maintain that there are also Portals to Shambhala in Istanbul. 

Mongolia | Ulaan Baatar | Full Moon| | Shambhala

Yesterday, April 28 (Gregorian Calendar), was the Full Moon of Caitra (March-April), the first month of the year according to  the much more relevant Kalachakra Calendar. As you know, this was the day on which the Buddha taught the Kalachakra Tantra to Suchandra, the first of the Kings of Shambhala. 

Suchandra (reigned 977 BC – 877 BC)

Wandered on up to Gandan Monastery for the All-Day Puja held to celebrate this auspicious day. 

Approaching Gandan

Lama on his way to Puja

Wandering into the Kalachakra Temple, where the Puja was held, I viewed the Kalachakra Mandala Made of Sand and the Kalachakra Thangkas, then sat for two hours listening to the chanting. 

Kalachakra Temple (right) and Janraisig Temple

According to tradition, while the Buddha was in his physical body at Vulture’s Peak in India delivering the Prajnaparamita Sutra he bi-located in south India, at a place called the Dhanyakataka Stupa, and taught the Kalachakra to Suchandra, who had traveling to India from The Kingdom of Shambhala somewhere in the north specifically to receive these teachings.

Vulture’s Peak in India 

It is generally believed that the name of the capital of Mongolia, Ulaan Baatar (Red Warrior), refers to the Bolshevik fighters who established socialism in Mongolia in the 1920s. This is only the exoteric meaning of the name, however. According to local Shambhalists the name actually refers to the Red Warrior (sometimes identified as Jamsran) who guards the Portals to Shambhala. Thus the city itself, and by extension most of Mongolia, is considered by some to be a Portal to Shambhala. This is why the Full Moon of Caitra (April 28 this year) is such an important day in Mongolia. There are, of course, those who maintain that there are also Portals to Shambhala in Istanbul. 

Mongolia | Persecution of Buddhism

See a documentary, made in 1991, about the killing of Buddhist monks in Mongolia during the communist-era repressions: Part One of Five. Here’s the blurb on youtube.com

Documentary investigating the evidence now coming to light of a major persecution and massacre of over 100,000 people in Mongolia during the 1930s and 1940s under the leadership of the Mongolian dictator Marshal Choibalsan, a protege of Stalin's. Most of these were Buddhist lamas, and the film includes eye-witness reports of the killings, shots of some of the graves and skeletons found, and the present slow relaxation of religious freedom and the return of some monastaries and lamas.

Venerable Dude Shravasti Dhammika at the ever-enlightening Dhamma Musings has also posted on this.

Mongolia | Persecution of Buddhism

See a documentary, made in 1991, about the killing of Buddhist monks in Mongolia during the communist-era repressions: Part One of Five. Here’s the blurb on youtube.com

Documentary investigating the evidence now coming to light of a major persecution and massacre of over 100,000 people in Mongolia during the 1930s and 1940s under the leadership of the Mongolian dictator Marshal Choibalsan, a protege of Stalin's. Most of these were Buddhist lamas, and the film includes eye-witness reports of the killings, shots of some of the graves and skeletons found, and the present slow relaxation of religious freedom and the return of some monastaries and lamas.

Venerable Dude Shravasti Dhammika at the ever-enlightening Dhamma Musings has also posted on this.

Mongolia | Ulaanbaatar | Ugliest City on Earth?!?

Wandering by the website of the London-based Newspaper the Telegraph I was startled to see a photo taken just a couple hundred yards from my own hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi.

View of Downtown UB from near my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi

I was even more flabbergasted to read this:

If there was a competition to find the ugliest city on Earth, then the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator [sic] would be the leading contender for the title. The combination of grim, Soviet-style concrete high-rises, rambling slum-shanties and towering coal-fired power plants belching out smoke over the city reeks of the depression and decay that was a legacy of decades of communist rule.

Ulaan Baatar the “ugliest city on Earth”? I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As I have stated in the past, I consider Ulaanbaatar to be on par with Istanbul and the Pyramids of Egypt as one of the world’s most alluring places. And by the way, isn’t it about time newspapers update their style books to reflect the correct English transliteration of the city’s name, which is Ulaan Baatar or Ulaanbaatar, and not “Ulan Bator,” a holdover from the Soviet era? 

Mongolia | Ulaanbaatar | Ugliest City on Earth?!?

Wandering by the website of the London-based Newspaper the Telegraph I was startled to see a photo taken just a couple hundred yards from my own hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi.

View of Downtown UB from near my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi

I was even more flabbergasted to read this:

If there was a competition to find the ugliest city on Earth, then the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator [sic] would be the leading contender for the title. The combination of grim, Soviet-style concrete high-rises, rambling slum-shanties and towering coal-fired power plants belching out smoke over the city reeks of the depression and decay that was a legacy of decades of communist rule.

Ulaan Baatar the “ugliest city on Earth”? I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As I have stated in the past, I consider Ulaanbaatar to be on par with Istanbul and the Pyramids of Egypt as one of the world’s most alluring places. And by the way, isn’t it about time newspapers update their style books to reflect the correct English transliteration of the city’s name, which is Ulaan Baatar or Ulaanbaatar, and not “Ulan Bator,” a holdover from the Soviet era? 

World | Lady Gaga and Jihad

A Wall Street Journal Editorial poses an interesting question:

“What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world: (a) Israeli settlements on the West Bank; or (b) a Lady Gaga music video?”

 Lady Gaga: Can the Mahdi be far behind?

Then the folks at Tabir.net weighted in with Blame It On Lady Gaga, managing at the same time to invoke Pat Buchanan and Sayyid Qutb, the  “intellectual godfather of al Qaeda,” who said: 

“The American girl knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs and sleek legs, and she shows all this and does not hide it.”

Sayyid Qutb went on to denounce  “this [American] music the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires” (He must have had  in mind Little Richard).

So now it appears that Lady Gaga is to blame for everything, including the Cult of the Assassins, the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, and the Johnstown Flood. Give the girl a break! 

World | Lady Gaga and Jihad

A Wall Street Journal Editorial poses an interesting question:

“What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world: (a) Israeli settlements on the West Bank; or (b) a Lady Gaga music video?”

 Lady Gaga: Can the Mahdi be far behind?

Then the folks at Tabir.net weighted in with Blame It On Lady Gaga, managing at the same time to invoke Pat Buchanan and Sayyid Qutb, the  “intellectual godfather of al Qaeda,” who said: 

“The American girl knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs and sleek legs, and she shows all this and does not hide it.”

Sayyid Qutb went on to denounce  “this [American] music the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires” (He must have had  in mind Little Richard).

So now it appears that Lady Gaga is to blame for everything, including the Cult of the Assassins, the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, and the Johnstown Flood. Give the girl a break!