Turkey | Midyat

The city of Midyat, about thirty-seven miles east-northeast of Mardin, is in the middle of Tur Abdin, the old Syriac Christian heartland located in the mountains and plateaus just north of the Mesopotamian plain. Many Syriacs migrated out of the area in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the old Syriac quarter in Midyat was largely abandoned. A modern Kurdish city grew up nearby. A few Syriacs have drifted back to the town in the twenty-first century—according to local sources about 130 Christian Syriac people now live in the Old Town. There is also reportedly a small Syriac Jewish population. Kurds also live in the Old Town, and in fact I did not encounter any Syriac Christians. Locals say they do not engage in casual encounters with tourists. 

 The old Syriac Christian quarter of Midyat (click on photos for enlargements).

 Syriac Christian Church undergoing renovations

 Steeple of Syriac Christian Church. Note the characteristic teardrop design on one side of the steeple.

 A private residence utilizing the teardrop motif

Street scene in Midyat. I don’t know why, but I kept expecting Joseph and Mary and their little toddler to come walking around the corner. 

  Typical street scene in Midyat

 Typical street scene in Midyat

 The old bazaar in Midyat. The store fronts on the right are all boarded up. 

 The entrance to what is apparently a private residence. The stonework of tawny limestone appears to be new. The art of stone masonry and carving is alive and well in Midyat. There are numerous new stone buildings with elaborate carved decorations in the Kurdish part of Midyat. 

 We walked half a mile or so in the brutal heat to the Mor Abraham & Mor Hobel Monastery, which supposedly contains a 1700 year-old church, only to find that the entire complex was closed to the public that day. 

 An old Syriac mansion which has been turned into a museum, cultural center, and conference hall. It and the nearby streets also serve as the settings of a popular Turkish soap opera called “Sila”. Curiously, Mardin was also used as an open-air set for a Turkish soap opera. 

A room in the museum made up as a traditional Syriac Audience Chamber. The local Syriac patriarch sat in the chair at the end of the room. Petitioners knelt on the carpets and pleaded their cases. 

 One room in the museum is a traditional Syriac bridal suite made up for the wedding night. Enough to make anyone want to get married. 

 Kurdish man who drove me to Midyat. His regular job is as an imam in a mosque in the city of Batman. He is the proud father of eight children. 

 Kurdish girls hamming it up. They spoke Kurdish, of course, but my driver claimed they did not speak Turkish at all. They were eager to practice English, however, which they learn from watching TV.

Kurdish girl 

Greece | Thessaly | Kalambaka | Meteora #1

The corner take-out that I frequented  in Thessaloniki raised the price of chicken souvlaki from 2.50 to 2.75 euros. That signaled the end of my love affair with Thessaloniki. The heart is so fickle! The next morning I walked a mile through a persistent drizzle to the train station and caught the train south to Kalambaka, home of the Meteora monastery complex. I have Been Here Before, but was eager to return when it was cooler and the environs less crowded. It is the shoulder of the tourist season, and prices of hotels and meals have started to drop. It is certainly cheaper than Thessaloniki. And the weather is fantastic! Hard frosts at night but warming into the 50s F. in the afternoons. Great for hiking. Gorgeous foliage.

St. Nicholas Monastery, one of six monasteries in the area now open to the public (click on photos for enlargements). 

Monastery of St Barbara

Great Meteora Monastery

Monastery of Barlaam

From the road a trail climbs up 715 vertical feet through the chasm to the left of Barlaam Monastery.

Trail to Barlaam Monastery

Trail side shrine

Avian voyeurs would have a field day here. I saw at least fifteen or twenty different kinds of birds. 

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Biger Depression | Biger Market

Wandered by the Biger Market, in the town of Biger, located in the Biger Depression. This huge natural sump, with no outlet to the sea, drains an area very roughly fifty miles from east to west and twenty miles from north to south. At its bottom, at an altitude of about 4,265 feet, is a salt lake, Biger Nuur, measuring several miles long, its size varying considerably according to the time of year and the amount of recent rainfall. The Depression is bounded on the north by the Shar Shorootyn Nuruu, with peaks of over 10,300 feet, and on the south by another range with several peaks of over 11,000 feet, including 11,092-foot Burkhan Buudai Uul. Although much of the floor of the Depression is covered with barren gravel and salt flats, the foothills ramping up to the mountains on either side provide excellent grazing for sheep and goats and the mountains themselves support large herds of yaks. Small streams flowing out of the mountains are utilized for irrigation, allowing for small vegetable gardens. At one time even grapes were grown here; the area is currently famous for its enormous potatoes. These favorable conditions, along with its strategic location straddling an important caravan route from Uliastai, the capital of Mongolia during the Qing era (1891–1911) to Shar Khuls Oasis in southern Gov-Altai Aimag and on to China, Tibet, and Xinjiang, made the Biger Depression a relatively prosperous place. 

Entering the Biger Depression (click on photos for enlargements)

Biger Market

Biger is famous for its potatoes and other vegetables grown in irrigated gardens.

Aaaruul—dried milk curds—from the 3rd Bag, roughly equivalent to a township

Saddle for sale at the market

Nice saddle

Biger is also famous for its vodka made from yak milk.

Mountains to the south of the Biger. These mountains are notorious for their sightings of almas, the Mongolian equivalent of yetis. 

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Biger Depression | Biger Market

Wandered by the Biger Market, in the town of Biger, located in the Biger Depression. This huge natural sump, with no outlet to the sea, drains an area very roughly fifty miles from east to west and twenty miles from north to south. At its bottom, at an altitude of about 4,265 feet, is a salt lake, Biger Nuur, measuring several miles long, its size varying considerably according to the time of year and the amount of recent rainfall. The Depression is bounded on the north by the Shar Shorootyn Nuruu, with peaks of over 10,300 feet, and on the south by another range with several peaks of over 11,000 feet, including 11,092-foot Burkhan Buudai Uul. Although much of the floor of the Depression is covered with barren gravel and salt flats, the foothills ramping up to the mountains on either side provide excellent grazing for sheep and goats and the mountains themselves support large herds of yaks. Small streams flowing out of the mountains are utilized for irrigation, allowing for small vegetable gardens. At one time even grapes were grown here; the area is currently famous for its enormous potatoes. These favorable conditions, along with its strategic location straddling an important caravan route from Uliastai, the capital of Mongolia during the Qing era (1891–1911) to Shar Khuls Oasis in southern Gov-Altai Aimag and on to China, Tibet, and Xinjiang, made the Biger Depression a relatively prosperous place. 

Entering the Biger Depression (click on photos for enlargements)

Biger Market

Biger is famous for its potatoes and other vegetables grown in irrigated gardens.

Aaaruul—dried milk curds—from the 3rd Bag, roughly equivalent to a township

Saddle for sale at the market

Nice saddle

Biger is also famous for its vodka made from yak milk.

Mountains to the south of the Biger. These mountains are notorious for their sightings of almas, the Mongolian equivalent of yetis. 

Cyprus | Larnaka | Stoics | Zeno

 According to the New York Times, Stoicism is back, if not correctly understood: If You’re Reading Stoicism for Life Hacks, You’re Missing the Point.

I have long considered myself a Stoic and once made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Xeno, the founder of Stoicism. See Cyprus | Larnaka | Zeno | Stoics.

My Man Xeno

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Burkhan Buudai Uul

In 1998 I made a lengthy jeep tour of Gov-Altai Aimag in southwest Mongolia. While driving through the Biger Depression about 60 miles southeast of Altai, the capital of Gov-Altai, my jeep driver, a man named Chültem, pointed out a mountain to the south known as Burkhan Buudai Uul. “This is the sacred mountain of central Gov-Altai Aimag,” he said. “It is possible to ride horses to the top. You should come back again to Gov-Altai sometime and go to the summit of this mountain.” Later in the trip we again saw Burkhan Buudai Uul from various distances and perspectives and I soon made up my mind to someday return and ascend this mountain.

I was not able to get to Gov-Altai Aimag until some years later. After a two hour flight from Ulaanbaatar my translator, a twenty-two year old woman named Oyuna, and I landed in Altai, at 7132 feet the highest aimag capital Mongolia. The temperatures in Ulaanbaatar had been up in the eighties but a surprisingly chill wind greeted us as we walked from the plane to the small airport terminal. From out of the throng just outside the gates appeared two men who appeared to be in their sixties. The thin and wiry one introduced himself as Namsum (namsum = “bow and arrow”). Acquaintances in Ulaanbaatar had assured me that he was an expert in the history and local lore of Gov-Altai and in particular the Biger Depression and Burkhan Buudai Uul. He had been born in the Biger Depression and had worked there all his life as a schoolteacher, but he was now retired. He was nattily attired in dress shirt and slacks, khaki jacket, polished brown loafers, and a gray fedora. The man with him, he explained, was a schoolteacher chum of his from Altai town who out of curiosity had come along to the airport to meet the visitor to Gov-Altai. While waiting for our luggage Namsum mentioned that just the day before, June 25, it had snowed in Altai.

After a stop for staples at the Altai Market, a conglomeration of steel cargo containers with goods sold out of their back doors, we headed southeast on the unpaved road to the Biger Depression. A few miles out of town, on a hillside a half mile or so to the right of the road, could be seen several small stands of larch. “See those trees over there?” asked Namsum. I had taken note of them, since trees are so unusual in the Altai area. “Back in 1921,” he continued, ”a small band of White Russians under the command of the Buryat Vandanov rode down here from Narobanchin Monastery on the Zavkhan River north of here and was going to loot the monastery known as Aryn Khüree, which was located just behind that hill. It was wintertime and the black trunks of the trees stood out against the snow. From several miles away Vandanov saw the trees and thought they were Mongolian fighters assembled to protect Aryn Khüree. He and the White Russians turned around and rode back to Narobanchin Monastery. There used to be a monument near the base of the hill with an inscription on it thanking the trees for saving Aryn Khüree, but it has since disappeared. And of course Aryn Khüree itself was later destroyed by the communists in 1937.”

Vandanov had been a commander in the army of the notorious world-class psychopath and megalomaniac Roman Fyodorovich von Ungern-Sternberg (1886–1921), the so-called Bloody Baron, who with a rag-tag army of White Russian refugees and soldiers-of-fortune; displaced Cossacks; desperados and criminals; psychopaths of various hues; Inner Asian malcontents, including a detachment of Bashkir Muslims; and other assorted riffraff, had seized control of Örgöö (Ulaanbaatar) in February of 1921. He had intended to conquer all of Mongolia and then use it as a base for an Asian Buddhist empire. As one of his followers put, it, “Here in these historic plains we will organize an army as powerful as that of Genghis Khan. Then we will move, as that great man did, and smash the whole of Europe. The world must die so that a new and better world may come forth, reincarnated on a higher plane.” Bolshevik partisans soon put an end to this quixotic scheme. The Bloody Baron was captured and eventually executed, but shards of his army under the command of renegades like Vandanov continued to terrorize western Mongolia, including what is now Gov-Altai Aimag.

Soon we start the gradual descent toward Dötiin Davaa, a 9099-foot pass through the Shar Shorootyn Mountains. In a matter of minutes the skies cloud over completely and big wet snowflakes are falling. Namsum is impressed. Rain or snow at the beginning of a trip, especially a journey to a sacred mountain like Burkhan Buudai Uul, is a good sign, he insists. By the time we reach the pass, sixteen miles from Altai and almost 2000 feet higher, we are in the middle of an outright blizzard. It was June 26. At the top of the pass is a large ovoo surmounted by a length of tree trunk draped with hundreds of blue prayer scarves. Several cars and jeeps have stopped here and a dozen people are circumambulating the ovoo. One man has a bottle of vodka and is tossing capfuls of the alcohol onto the ovoo, while others splash the rocks with offerings of milk tea from plastic soda bottles. We get out of the jeep and circumambulate the ovoo three times on foot. Back in the jeep Namsum related that this large ovoo here at Dötiin Davaa was created by a famous local lama named Buural Lamkhai (c.1860-1910). As late as the nineteenth century, he says, the Gov-Altai region and especially the area around Dötiin Davaa had been well-known for its shamans. They were notorious, so claims Namsum, for causing mischief of one kind or another and were especially skilled at inflicting curses on people. The local herdsmen were afraid of them and they were in constant conflict with the local Buddhist lamas.

Ovoo at 9099-foot Dötiin Davaa

Once Lama Buural Lamkhai and some of his disciples set out on a trip to Lake Khövsgöl in northwest Mongolia. They had no sooner started out than two shamans, followers of the chief shaman in the area, stole their horses. Buural Lamkhai went into meditation and began chanting. This went on for several days. Soon the chief shaman fell ill; his arms and legs became numb and he was unable to move. Suspecting that Buural Lamkhai was the cause of his ailments he ordered his two followers to return the stolen horses and then beg the lama to come and heal him. This Buural Lamkhai did. The chief shaman recovered his health but his shamanic power was broken. To commemorate his victory over the shamans Buural Lamkhai built this ovoo here at Dötiin Davaa and established a temple nearby named Bureg Nomyn Khaan Khiid. “Ever since then, Gov-Altai has not been cursed by shamans,” noted Namsum. The temple has since been destroyed, but all travelers on the road still stop at the pass and make offerings to Buural Lamkhai’s ovoo. The lama had a camp near where Namsum was born, at Bayan Gol in the shadow of Burkhan Buudai Uul, and Namsum says we may get a chance to visit this place after we ascend the mountain. I ask Namsum if there are still practicing shamans in Gov-Altai. There are no traditional shamans still active that he is aware of, but he insists that there are still people who are quite capable of inflicting curses on their enemies.

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Burkhan Buudai Uul

In 1998 I made a lengthy jeep tour of Gov-Altai Aimag in southwest Mongolia. While driving through the Biger Depression about 60 miles southeast of Altai, the capital of Gov-Altai, my jeep driver, a man named Chültem, pointed out a mountain to the south known as Burkhan Buudai Uul. “This is the sacred mountain of central Gov-Altai Aimag,” he said. “It is possible to ride horses to the top. You should come back again to Gov-Altai sometime and go to the summit of this mountain.” Later in the trip we again saw Burkhan Buudai Uul from various distances and perspectives and I soon made up my mind to someday return and ascend this mountain.

I was not able to get to Gov-Altai Aimag until some years later. After a two hour flight from Ulaanbaatar my translator, a twenty-two year old woman named Oyuna, and I landed in Altai, at 7132 feet the highest aimag capital Mongolia. The temperatures in Ulaanbaatar had been up in the eighties but a surprisingly chill wind greeted us as we walked from the plane to the small airport terminal. From out of the throng just outside the gates appeared two men who appeared to be in their sixties. The thin and wiry one introduced himself as Namsum (namsum = “bow and arrow”). Acquaintances in Ulaanbaatar had assured me that he was an expert in the history and local lore of Gov-Altai and in particular the Biger Depression and Burkhan Buudai Uul. He had been born in the Biger Depression and had worked there all his life as a schoolteacher, but he was now retired. He was nattily attired in dress shirt and slacks, khaki jacket, polished brown loafers, and a gray fedora. The man with him, he explained, was a schoolteacher chum of his from Altai town who out of curiosity had come along to the airport to meet the visitor to Gov-Altai. While waiting for our luggage Namsum mentioned that just the day before, June 25, it had snowed in Altai.

After a stop for staples at the Altai Market, a conglomeration of steel cargo containers with goods sold out of their back doors, we headed southeast on the unpaved road to the Biger Depression. A few miles out of town, on a hillside a half mile or so to the right of the road, could be seen several small stands of larch. “See those trees over there?” asked Namsum. I had taken note of them, since trees are so unusual in the Altai area. “Back in 1921,” he continued, ”a small band of White Russians under the command of the Buryat Vandanov rode down here from Narobanchin Monastery on the Zavkhan River north of here and was going to loot the monastery known as Aryn Khüree, which was located just behind that hill. It was wintertime and the black trunks of the trees stood out against the snow. From several miles away Vandanov saw the trees and thought they were Mongolian fighters assembled to protect Aryn Khüree. He and the White Russians turned around and rode back to Narobanchin Monastery. There used to be a monument near the base of the hill with an inscription on it thanking the trees for saving Aryn Khüree, but it has since disappeared. And of course Aryn Khüree itself was later destroyed by the communists in 1937.”

Vandanov had been a commander in the army of the notorious world-class psychopath and megalomaniac Roman Fyodorovich von Ungern-Sternberg (1886–1921), the so-called Bloody Baron, who with a rag-tag army of White Russian refugees and soldiers-of-fortune; displaced Cossacks; desperados and criminals; psychopaths of various hues; Inner Asian malcontents, including a detachment of Bashkir Muslims; and other assorted riffraff, had seized control of Örgöö (Ulaanbaatar) in February of 1921. He had intended to conquer all of Mongolia and then use it as a base for an Asian Buddhist empire. As one of his followers put, it, “Here in these historic plains we will organize an army as powerful as that of Genghis Khan. Then we will move, as that great man did, and smash the whole of Europe. The world must die so that a new and better world may come forth, reincarnated on a higher plane.” Bolshevik partisans soon put an end to this quixotic scheme. The Bloody Baron was captured and eventually executed, but shards of his army under the command of renegades like Vandanov continued to terrorize western Mongolia, including what is now Gov-Altai Aimag.

Soon we start the gradual descent toward Dötiin Davaa, a 9099-foot pass through the Shar Shorootyn Mountains. In a matter of minutes the skies cloud over completely and big wet snowflakes are falling. Namsum is impressed. Rain or snow at the beginning of a trip, especially a journey to a sacred mountain like Burkhan Buudai Uul, is a good sign, he insists. By the time we reach the pass, sixteen miles from Altai and almost 2000 feet higher, we are in the middle of an outright blizzard. It was June 26. At the top of the pass is a large ovoo surmounted by a length of tree trunk draped with hundreds of blue prayer scarves. Several cars and jeeps have stopped here and a dozen people are circumambulating the ovoo. One man has a bottle of vodka and is tossing capfuls of the alcohol onto the ovoo, while others splash the rocks with offerings of milk tea from plastic soda bottles. We get out of the jeep and circumambulate the ovoo three times on foot. Back in the jeep Namsum related that this large ovoo here at Dötiin Davaa was created by a famous local lama named Buural Lamkhai (c.1860-1910). As late as the nineteenth century, he says, the Gov-Altai region and especially the area around Dötiin Davaa had been well-known for its shamans. They were notorious, so claims Namsum, for causing mischief of one kind or another and were especially skilled at inflicting curses on people. The local herdsmen were afraid of them and they were in constant conflict with the local Buddhist lamas.

Ovoo at 9099-foot Dötiin Davaa

Once Lama Buural Lamkhai and some of his disciples set out on a trip to Lake Khövsgöl in northwest Mongolia. They had no sooner started out than two shamans, followers of the chief shaman in the area, stole their horses. Buural Lamkhai went into meditation and began chanting. This went on for several days. Soon the chief shaman fell ill; his arms and legs became numb and he was unable to move. Suspecting that Buural Lamkhai was the cause of his ailments he ordered his two followers to return the stolen horses and then beg the lama to come and heal him. This Buural Lamkhai did. The chief shaman recovered his health but his shamanic power was broken. To commemorate his victory over the shamans Buural Lamkhai built this ovoo here at Dötiin Davaa and established a temple nearby named Bureg Nomyn Khaan Khiid. “Ever since then, Gov-Altai has not been cursed by shamans,” noted Namsum. The temple has since been destroyed, but all travelers on the road still stop at the pass and make offerings to Buural Lamkhai’s ovoo. The lama had a camp near where Namsum was born, at Bayan Gol in the shadow of Burkhan Buudai Uul, and Namsum says we may get a chance to visit this place after we ascend the mountain. I ask Namsum if there are still practicing shamans in Gov-Altai. There are no traditional shamans still active that he is aware of, but he insists that there are still people who are quite capable of inflicting curses on their enemies.

Uzbekistan | Dabusiya

As you know, the Great Silk Road City Of Bukhara fell to the Mongols sometime of February of 1220. By the beginning of March Chingis Khan was ready to march on Samarkand. The two Jewels of Mawarannahr, Bukhara and Samarkand, were linked by the so-called Royal Road, an ancient thoroughfare following roughly the course of the Zerafshan River. Samarkand is 135 miles east of Bukhara ATCF, but upstream from Bukhara the Zarafshan River loops to the north before continuing on east, and the distance between the two cities via the Royal Road, which roughly follows the river, was between thirty-seven and thirty-nine farsakhs (148 to 156 miles) This was a journey was six or seven stages, or days, by camel. 

The Zerafshan Valley (click on photos for enlargements)

Accompanied by the huge flock of levies who had been dragooned in Bukhara for the anticipated siege of Samarkand, the Mongol army proceed north on the Royal Road, probably passing once again through the towns of Shargh, Iskijkath, and Vabkent  and finally reaching the edge of the Bukhara Oasis at Tawais. After another eight miles they passed by the Caravanserai Of Rabat-i-Malik and continued on twelve more miles to Kermaniye. 

The huge portal of the Rabat-i-Malik Caravanserai

At some point beyond of the Bukhara Oasis Chingis Khan may have divided his army into two parts, with one contingent crossing the Zerafshan River and proceeding east on the north bank, and the other riding east on the south bank. According to a story told by the Chinese Daoist Chang Chunzi, who himself traveled along the north bank of the Zerafshan a year later, in 1221, Chingis Khan himself led the army on the north bank. The Chinese holy man saw “on the road a well more than one hundred feet deep, where an old man, a Mohammadan, had a bullock which turned a drawbeam and raised water for thirsty people. The emperor Chinghiz, when passing here, had seen this man, and ordered that he should be exempted from taxes and  duties.”

Beyond Kermaniye the Royal Road veered to the south-southeast and passed a region dotted with numerous cities and towns that had flourished for a thousand years in the rich oases lining the Zerafshan RIver. This was the very heart of old Sogdiana. Chingis Khan, in his haste to get to reach Samarkand, did not linger in this well-populated and prosperous region. According to the Persian historian Juvaini (1226–1283), “whenever the villages in his path submitted, he in no way molested them.” The historian al-Athir (1160–1233), however, asserts that Chingis Khan continued to seize able-bodied men in the towns he passed through, adding them to the already vast horde of levies he had dragooned in Bukhara. Al-Athir further asserts that these men were forced to march on foot alongside the Mongol army and that any who fell from hunger or exhaustion were killed. 

We hear of only two cities which put up any real resistance. The first was Dabusiya, located twenty-four miles south-southeast miles east of the current-day town of Karmana on the south bank of the Zerafshan. One of the half dozen or so major cities of ancient Sogdiana, Dabusiya had been a well fortified city as early as 112 a.d., and in the early eighth century over 10,000 Sogdian and Turkish troops had unsuccessfully defended the city walls against Arab invaders. It was later occupied by the Samanids, and was still a well-fortified city when it it finally fell to the Qarakhanids during the reign of Ismail II al-Muntasir, the last of the Samanid rulers. With the defeat of the Qarakhanids it became part of the Khwarezmshah’s realm. Although still heavily fortified, with mammoth walls facing the Zerafshan River, it did not provide much of an obstacle to the Mongols. Chingis left a detachments of troops to besiege the city while he and bulk of his army hastened eastward to Samarkand. We hear no more of Dabusiya from Juvaini or other historians, but eventually the city fell to the Mongols and was at some point destroyed. It was never rebuilt and today there is no city or town of Dabusiya, although the ruins of the old city walls still rear up from the south bank of the Zerafshan. 

Looking down the Zerafshan River from the ruined ramparts of Dabusiya

 The walls of Dabusiya

 Walls of Dabusiya

An old street running through the ruins of Dabusiya

 One of the city gates in the distance, with a street running through the city

Street running through the city

 The Zerafshan River upstream from the top of the city’s ramparts

 Local people taking the ferry across the Zerafshan

Nowadays people come here to visit the tomb of Daliv Ismatulla Abrievich Imam, a famous local saint, whose mausoleum now stands amidst the ruins of the old city.

 Mausoleum of  Daliv Ismatulla Abrievich Imam, situated amidst the ruins of Dabusiya

 Mausoleum of Daliv Ismatulla Abrievich Imam

Tomb of Daliv Ismatulla Abrievich Imam

My driver (left), without whose help I would have never found Dabusiya; the imam in the charge of the mausoleum (center); and some guy who insisted on getting into the photo (right)

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.

China | Beijing | Yonghegong

As I mentioned in a previous post there is supposed to be a Shambhala Thangka in the collection of the Yonghegong, or Lama Temple in Beijing. The last time I had been there it was not out on public display, but I decided to pop in again anyhow on the outside chance that it could now be seen.

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Yonghegong is the biggest surviving Buddhist temple in Beijing. Completed in 1694, it originally served as the residence of Qing Emperor Kangxi’s son Yong Zheng. In 1725, shortly after Yong Zheng became emperor, he upgraded the complex and gave it the name Yonghegong, meaning “Harmony and Peace Palace.” It was Yong Zheng who some believe ordered the assassination of Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia in 1723. In any event, Zanabazar died that year in the Yellow Temple in Beijing. Whatever his role in Zanabazar’s death, Yong Zheng, following the instructions of his father Kangxi, built Amarbayasgalant Monastery in northern Mongolia to hold Zanabazar’s remains. In 1744 Yong Zheng’s successor Qian Long turned the complex into a monastery, and along with the Yellow Temple it became an outpost of Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism in Beijing. It survived the Cultural Revolution (1966-1977) more-or-less intact supposedly because of the direct intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai. The complex was reopened in 1981. Among the chief attractions now is the sixty-foot-tall Standing Maitreya in the Main Temple. Carved from the trunk of a white sandalwood tree, it is said to be the largest statue in the world made from a single piece of wood (duly certified in 1990 by the Guiness Book of World Records, a Chinese obsession). A whole posse of monks is on hand to prevent people from taking photographs of the wooden Maitreya, so no photos of that.
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I found no trace of the Shambhala thangka, which must still be in storage somewhere, so I mosied across the street to the many shops selling religious paraphernalia to stock up on Nanmu incense, made from the wood of the Nanmu tree. Supposedly Nanmu incense was introduced into China by the Panchen Lama of Tibet, who gave some as a gift to the Qing Emperor Qian Long on the occasion of the latter’s seventieth birthday. It quickly became Emperor’s favorite incense. It has the unusual quality of smelling much stronger on rainy days, and is said to clear the nose and sharpen one’s thoughts. It also drives away mosquitoes.
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About a block down the street from the temple entrance is a small Tibetan shop ran by a young Tibetan man and woman. They have a nice selection of thangkas, but as one might expect at this venue a little over-priced. The young man was kind enough to restring my mala for me free-of-charge. Next time you are in Beijing and need your beads restrung this is definitely the place to go.