U.S.A | Maryland | Pennsylvania | New Book

The 3,294-foot Big Savage Tunnel north of Frostburg closed for the winter on November 30, 2023, and would not reopen until March 28, 2024, thus effectively ending the biking season for through-trips between Cumberland and Pittsburgh. I spent the winter holed up in Frostburg, Maryland, which I am using as a base for my wanderings on the GAP. After the November 30 tunnel closing a few brief snow squalls laid down an inch or less of snow that quickly melted and occasionally rain would freeze at the higher altitudes, making the trail treacherous, but other than during these brief episodes the GAP remained open to the tunnel for much of December and early January. In late January and in February a few heavy snowfalls closed the GAP completely. The last big blizzard, which dropped close to six inches of snow, hit just before the Spring Equinox on March 19. It took almost a week for the snow to melt off the GAP north of Frostburg. As soon as the trail was clear I rode up to Big Savage Tunnel . . .  Continued.

Mongolia | False Lama of Mongolia: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan

Who was Dambijantsan?

A Buddhist monk; a freedom fighter for Mongolian independence; the descendant of Amursanaa (1723–1757), the Western Mongol who led the last great uprising against the Qing Dynasty of China; the incarnation of Mahakala, the Buddhist god of war; bandit, torturer, murderer, or evil incarnate? During his lifetime no one was sure who he really was, and even today the controversy about his life continues.

Born in what is now the Republic of Kalmykia, part of the Russian Federation, Dambijantsen traveled throughout Tibet, India, and China before arriving in Mongolia in 1890 where he tossed gold coins to bystanders and announced to one and all that he had come to free Mongolia from the yoke of the Qing Dynasty of China. After disappearing almost twenty years he returned to lead the attack on Khovd City, the last Chinese outpost in Mongolia. Honored by the Eighth Bogd Gegeen, the theocratic leader of Mongolia, for his efforts in achieving Mongolian independence, he went on to establish his own mini-state in western Mongolia, which he hoped to use as a base for establishing a Mongol-led Buddhist khanate in Inner Asia. His dictatorial nature and unbridled sadism soon came to the fore and he was finally arrested and imprisoned in Russia. After the Russian Revolution he returned to Mongolia, gathered new followers around him, and established a stronghold at the nexus of old caravan routes in Gansu Province, China. He robbed caravans, grew opium, and once again dreamed of creating a new Mongolian khanate in Inner Asia. Finally the new Bolshevik government in Mongolia, fearful of his rising power, issued orders for his assassination. Dambijantsan transmigrated in 1922, but in Mongolia legends persist to this day that his spirit still rides on the winds of the Gobi and continues to haunt his former lairs.

For more on Dambijantsan see False Lama of Mongolia: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan. 

United States | Maryland | Great Allegheny Passage | Cumberland | Mount Savage | Frostburg

In Cumberland, Maryland, the Spring, or Vernal, Equinox occurred at 11:06 p.m. on March 19, according to the Gregorian calendar imposed on the Occidental world by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The Equinox marks the astrological astronomical beginning of the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s often said that the Spring Equinox is when day and night are of equal length. Actually, due to an astronomical quirk, the date when day and night are equal, known as the Equilux, is usually a few days before the Equinox. This year March 15 has eleven hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-five seconds of daylight. The next day has twelve hours, two minutes, and thirty-one seconds of daylight, so the pendulum has already swung toward longer days. The day of the Equinox has twelve hours, ten minutes, and twenty-four seconds of daylight. The next day has twelve hours, thirteen minutes, and zero seconds, making it two minutes and thirty-six seconds longer than the day before. The procession is on to the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, on June 20. I have decided that between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice I will wander on the Great Allegheny Passage, a bike and hiking trail built on the roadbeds of now-abandoned railroads that extends 150 miles from Cumberland to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Another trail, the C&O Canal Towpath, runs 184.5 from Cumberland to Washington, D.C, making it possible, in season, to ride a bike—or hike, if you are so inclined—334.5 miles from Pittsburgh to Washington. No motorized vehicles (except for electric bikes) are allowed on the entire path. Before proceeding on the GAP I will first explore the city of Cumberland . . . Continued.

France | Paris | George Roerich In Love

George Roerich was born on August 16, 1902, in the village of Okulovka, located in the Russian province of Novgorod, where his father and mother were taking part in an archaeological expedition. Like his father, he was artistically inclined and began to draw at an early age. When he was six years old, in 1908, a show featuring works by the children of members of the World of Art Association, to which his father belonged, displayed his youthful efforts. “A significant number of drawings are related to military clashes, knightly tournaments, and warlike angels and saints”, we are told. ”According to his mother, “such an interest was not accidental . . . At the genetic level, Yuri Roerich preserved tribal memory; the ancestors laid the warrior magnetism in him.” As we have seen, his mother was the grandniece of General Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army that defeated Napoleon in 1812. Yet another relative on his mother’s side claimed to be descended from Batu Khan, grandson of Chingis Khan and founder of the Golden Horde, and it was later claimed that he was an reincarnation of the fourteenth-century warlord Tamerlane. After the Russian Revolution, however, when the Roerichs were living in Finland, George’s interests took a more scholarly bent, and he began to study Eastern literature and languages. It was in these fields that he would excel. 

 

When the Roerichs moved to England in 1919 George enrolled in the Indo-Iranian Department of School of Oriental Languages at the University of London, where he   studied under famed linguist Edward Denison Ross, who could read in forty-nine languages and speak in thirty, including Tibetan. The first languages George studied were Persian and Sanskrit. He also organized the anti-Bolshevik group known as the Russian Youth Circle. Like his father, his views on Bolshevism would change by the time he arrived in Mongolia. It was in London, of course, that his mother first encountered Master Morya, who would put the Roerichs on the path to Inner Asia and Shambhala. To further prepare for this epic journey in the spring of 1920 George applied to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In his application he stated that wanted to “‘continue and complete” his education in Eastern languages and philosophy. 

 

The Roerichs arrived in New York on October 3, 1920. On October 21 George began classes at Harvard, where he studied under acclaimed scholar Charles R. Lanman, founder of the “Harvard Oriental Series”, which featured English translations of Indian classics.  George took courses in Sanskrit, Pali, Greek, and Chinese and was soon recognized as a prodigy. He was able to get a degree in two years. He now set his sights on studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. 

 

In August of 1920, apparently just after the Roerich family’s stay on Monhegan Island, George proceeded to Paris and enrolled at the Sorbonne. He took up residence with the Chklaver family, headed by Gavriil Grigorievich Chklaver, who had been a successful businessman and banker back in Russia before the revolution. Nicholas and Elena had crossed paths with him several times and he was now happy to assist George. Gavriil Grigorievich’s own son George was also a student at the Sorbonne, and the two Georges became thick friends. In addition to his linguistic studies, which by now included the Tibetan and Mongolian languages, George took courses in military science, studying under the Russian ex-general N. N. Golovin, and jurisprudence. As we have seen, George had been obsessed by martial themes as a young boy.  But why we might ask was the scholar of languages interested once again in military science and also in jurisprudence? His biographer explains:

As an alleged descendent of the Scandinavian Vikings, Yuri [George] claimed that he sensed a militant spirit in his veins, and the fact was further confirmed by the Master [Morya] who revealed that he had been Tamerlane in one of his former lives and prophesied that he would again lead the Mongolian hordes in the future apocalyptic Shambhala War. So Yuri apparently wanted to prepare himself for the battles he would wage for the sake of the Messiah. As for jurisprudence, he might need it as a participant in the Roerichs’ mission or “spiritual embassy” to the ruler of Tibet.

Meanwhile George continued his language studies with the influential French Indologist Sylvain Lévi (1863–1935); Jacques Bacot (1871–1965), the leading Tibetologist in France at the time; Paul Jules Antoine Meillet (1866–1936) a pioneering French linguist; and renowned Sinologist Paul Eugène Pelliot (1878–1945). In the winter of 1923 he was elected to the prestigious Linguistic Society and the magazine “French Pages” began publishing his weekly column entitled “Literary and Political Views”. George’s career in Paris appeared to be a roaring success. Meanwhile back in New York his parents were putting in motion plans for their long awaited Khora around Inner Asia, in which George was to play a leading role. Then a monkey wrench was thrown into the whole works. George had fallen in love.  

 

Curiously enough—in light of later events—it was Nicholas Roerich who had instructed his son to look up the Manziarly family when he arrived in Paris. Stefan de Manziarly was of French-Italian descent but a citizen of Russia. Headquartered in Kharkov, in what is now Ukraine, he had made a fortune mining coal in the Donetsk Basin and was among the business elite in pre-Revolutionary Russia. The family had emigrated from Russia just before World War I and ended up in Paris. We hear little more about Stefan—he transmigrated in 1920—but his wife Irma made quite a splash. She was in communication with some of the leading intellectuals of the period, including the Russian philosopher, theologian, and Christian existentialist Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), and was herself a formidable scholar who translated classical Indian texts, including the Upanishads, a part of the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, from Sanskrit into Russian. Irma was also a hard-core Theosophist who was active in the French section of the Theosophical Society and  who led a group which met to study Madame Blavatsky’s magnum opus The Secret Doctrine. She befriended Annie Besant, who had been named president of the Theosophical Society in 1907, and had made several trip to Adyar, the headquarters of the society in India. She soon became a patron of Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), whom Annie Besant had grandiosely declared was the World Teacher, the  Eastern successor to the Nazarene Messiah. 

 

Amid all this activity she also found time to have four children: three daughters—Marcelle, Iolanthe, Marseille—and a son, Alexander. The children were introduced into the Theosophical milieu and they along with their mother were soon taking vacations in Italy, France, and Switzerland with the World Teacher Krishnamurti. It was all very heady stuff for the young girls. Of the daughters, Marcelle, or Mara, as she known to her family and friends, was perhaps the most accomplished. Born on October 13, 1899, she would twenty-two when George turned up on the Manziarly’s doorstep on September 30, 1922. George, born on August 16, 1902, would have been just over twenty. Sina Lichtmann, however, repeated the Roerich line that, “She [Mara] is four or five years older than Yury, and the two of them [Mara and her mother] have completely beguiled the boy.” The claim that Mara was four or five years older than George is also made by various biographers. Despite her youth, Mara had already composed musical works that had been played to acclaim in France and Holland. Upon hearing her music, George declared that it expressed an ”occult something.” 

 

Also, both Mara and her mother were, like the Roerichs themselves, devotees of Master Morya, the Himalayan Mahatma. George noted in his diary:

6 November 1922. I am eagerly waiting for messages from M.M. [Master Morya] Here something miraculous is happening to us. We [George and Mara] write automatically, see visions, etc. Before the writing we often see how the atmosphere is getting filled with blue stars and spheres.

It was beginning to sound like love. Then came the kicker. Master Morya, speaking as Allal Ming, declared that in an earlier life, when George had been incarnated as Tamerlane, an earlier incarnation of Mara had been his wife. This inspired Mara to start work on a large orchestral poem to be called “Tamerlane”. Soon it was clear that George had gone head-over-heels for Mara. He had found his soulmate, or as he himself put it, somewhat infelicitously, “my own Ego dressed in [a] skirt.” In a letter to his parents he gushed: “I am so madly happy!!! . . . Not a trace is left of the Harvardian Roerich.” This was apparently George’s first foray onto the battlefield in the war between the sexes and it could be excused if he got a little carried away. In another letter he enthused:

I would like to tell you about Mara. She is a remarkable person in many ways. She is different from her sisters, being very profound, mystical and sensitive. A close friend of Krishnamurti, and what’s most important she is devoted to our cause and the Service. She is an excellent musician, and I am so happy that I will have music in my life. Today her “Trio” was played in concert and it had great success. On December 11 a Russian choir will chant her “Songs without words”. I have already heard them and they are wonderful. Soon her ballet will be staged; it is called “Nataraja”, a God who manifests himself through the world dance.

On November 17, 1922, six weeks after they had met, George proposed to Mara and she accepted. Mara’s mother Irma was all in. She had earlier opined that Nicholas was ““a prophet and saint”” and that Elena was ‘saint’s wife.’” Now her daughter was gaining entry into this illustrious family. The marriage was scheduled for January 19, 1923. Now all George had to do was inform his parents. “‘Today, on the 17th, I declared my feelings to Mara and it turned out that we both deeply love and feel for each other. In a word, I decided to marry and go to India as a married man,’”  he wrote to his parents. Furthermore, he declared that if permission to marry was not granted he would “go and sacrifice myself in some crazy expedition into Africa or Indo-China.”

 

Back in New York Nicholas and Elena were shell-shocked. Nicholas had sent George to the Manziarlys with the best intentions, thinking that Irma would help him set up a branch of Corona Mundi, his art association, in Paris, and provide them with access to the World Teacher Krishnamurti, whom they hoped to meet with when they arrived in India. Nicholas also envisioned opening a “Lodge of Morya” in Paris with the help of the Manziarlys. He had not foreseen George getting swept off his feet by Irma’s daughter. Elena had a conniption fit. If only he had hooked up with some inconsequential French tart of the kind young men are prone to the matter could have easily been dismissed and George set back on the straight and narrow. But Mara Manziarly was no fly-by-night floozy. She was a formidable competitor for George’s affections.

 

Suddenly the whole khora around Inner Asia was called into question. Master Morya had declared that the four Roerichs—Svetoslav was included in early plans—were to lead the Western Buddhist Mission. There was no place for a fifth wheel, assuming that Mara would ever agree to such a multi-year journey into the wilds of Inner Asia. Yet how could George leave a new bride behind? There was an added complication. When the Roerichs eventually arrived in India they hope, to meet with with Besant, then head of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, and the newly anointed World Teacher Krishnamurti. To seek the favor of the Theosophists in India Nicolas offered to dedicate a painting, “The Messenger”, to Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society. The problem was, in his various meetings with the Manziarly family Krishnamurti had come to the conclusion that Mara was destined for a spiritual life that included celibacy (whether he himself remained celibate is a matter for some dispute).  For Mara to enter into married life with George would be viewed by him as a betrayal. At the time it was still crucial to the Roerichs’ plans to remain in the good graces of Krishnamurti, but a married George and Mara would hardly be welcomed in Adyar by the new Messiah. George, however, showed no signs of acquiescing to his parents’ objections. Instead he announced that not getting married to Mara would result in “‘spiritual death.’” On December the Roerichs, with heavy hearts, sent George a wire saying that they accepted his decision to marry. 

 

Then Nicholas and Elena got some breathing room. It turned out that the still-wet-behind-the-ears George could not be married in France unless his parents were present or had provided written permission notarized by the French consul in New York.  Bureaucratic complications ensued— Nicholas and Elena may have dragged their feet—and various documents flew back and forth to no avail.  Meanwhile, Madame Chklaver, who was still hosting George in Paris, wrote to Elena claiming that the Manziarlys were an “immoral family” and that Irma and her daughter were scheming to entrap the obviously unworldly and naive George into marriage. What’s more, George was cutting his classes at the Sorbonne and he and Mara were frittering their time away at parks and other leisure spots. 

 

Master Morya seemed to concur with Madame Chklaver. Sina Lichtmann noted in her diary:

January 4, 1923 We visited the Roerichs and had a séance. E.I. [Elena] is alarmed by the events. The night before they had a very sad séance at which it was Said [by Master Morya, hence the capitalization]: “The son’s reputation, needful to Me, is perishing.” After the séance we had a talk about the current serious times and E.I. mentioned that they’re having significant difficulties with Yury [George], who is the target of Madame Manziarly’s matrimonial ambitions for her daughter. She is four or five years older [sic] than Yury, and the two of them have completely beguiled the boy.

Elena wrote to George informing him that according to his horoscope January was a bad time to get married. She also relayed numerous messages from Master Morya, including: ““Udraya [George] should take care to avoid hasty decisions,’” and “Udraya, learn to act your age.’” Master Morya had earlier told George that in previous lives he and Mara had been married and thus their love was preordained, but now the Mahatma had apparently changed his mind as far as marriage was concerned. Elena’s constant harping finally wore George down, and finally it was decided that since the Roerichs were planning on coming to France in the spring of 1923 while on their way to India the whole matter of marriage could be postponed until then. 

 

In the meantime, Irma Manziarly, who by now was viewed by the Roerichs as nothing less than the Wife of Potiphar herself, had turned up in New York City. It seemed that the Roerichs had earlier, when they were still trying to enlist the Manziarlys in their various schemes, invited Iolanthe Manziarly, Mara’s sister, to New York to teach a class in eurythmics at the Master Institute.  Iolanthe (Io  to her friends) had met with Elena earlier. On November 16, the day before George proposed marriage in Paris, Sina Lichtmann met with Elena, who told her about a disturbing dream she had had a few days before: 

She awoke at about 3:00 a.m., saw a blinding light; her head was filled with images of crazily spinning circles, and she felt a huge weight that was rolled all over her body. She said that she had a terrible feeling of fear for her body. She felt totally exhausted afterward.

The very next day Iolanthe Manziarly paid Elena a visit. Iolanthe intimated that all was not well in the Manziarly household. According to Sina:

She [Iolanthe] painted her mother in a completely different light than what E.I. [Elena] had imagined: as a woman who had abandoned her children and had lived only for the sake of others, while at the same time causing her children to suffer terribly. That story made a great impression on E.I. She told me that she understood: she too should not become so absorbed into herself and her own world that she forgets her children, and that she was quite close to that.

Irma Manziarly arrived in New York City in late January. According to Sina, Elena “was dreading the upcoming visit by Mme. Manziarly . . . and how hard it will be to have a conversation with her after all the trouble she caused with Yury in Paris.” The first meetings between the two matriarchs did not go well. According to Sina, Irma “had made quite a poor impression. It was difficult for E.I. to be around her; she suffered from headaches and other ailments for two days after her visit. Only one thing has made E.I. accept her: her loyalty to the Master [Morya] and submission to His will.”

 

Shortly after her first meeting with Irma Manziarly Elena wrote to George:

Are you ready to cross out all achievements and lose the access to the Teacher? Right now I see a star lighten up in front of me. This is the sign of communication with the Teacher. This is the sign of harmony. Yurik, my very own, find the strength to resist this early marriage—don’t kill yourself . . . Mara is only the fact of current time, but she can change your karma. Your karma is brilliant, it leads to us. You should go with us and be our heir.

On January 29 Sina reported:

Spent the evening at the Roerichs’. E.I. is going through a very difficult time; she has to see Madame Manziarly frequently, whom she apparently quite dislikes. She threatened E.I. [Elena] with the death of her son if she separates him from her daughter. E.I. recalled a recent dream in which she kept a small, gray snake on her hand under the glove, thinking that it would not bite her. And on her hand there was a small cut, and suddenly she felt the snake bite her directly into that cut. She had already realized that this snake was Manziarly. Of course, now she will be trying to harm the Roerichs at every opportunity. 

But that wasn’t all. Master Morya now declared that unlike the Roerichs, all of whom claimed to be reincarnations of illustrious figures dating back at least to the time of the now sunken continent of Atlantis, Irma Manziarly in a past life had been a “Frau Necht, a vegetable seller in the nineteenth century, most insignificant.” 

 

In late March Irma Manziarly further infuriated Elena by having a notice of the upcoming nuptials of George and Mara published in the London Theosophical magazine Herald of the Star. On March 20 Sina reported:

Incidentally, N.K. said that now the vision (or a dream, I don’t remember) of E.I. in which she was hiding a little snake in her glove, which suddenly bit her in the scratch on her hand, has become clear. That snake is Madame Manziarly, who bit them again in the already existing wound by announcing Yury’s engagement to her daughter in a theosophical magazine and not in a newspaper so that this news would spread in theosophical circles.

Krishnamurti was now aware that his disciple Mara was planning to marry George Roerich. It is not quite clear what his reaction was. Perhaps he had his mind on loftier matters. In any case, it was going to be awkward if the Roerichs met up with Krishnamurti in India.

 

The Roerichs—Nicholas, Elena, and Svetoslav—arrived at Cherbourg, France on May 14, 1923, and George, sans Mara, was there to greet them. The whole family was in Paris a few days later. Nicholas, Elena, and Svetoslav checked in at the Hôtel Lord Byron on rue Lord Byron while George remained with the Chklavers. Nicholas had a raft of activities involving the Great Plan lined up, but first and foremost the George and Mara matter had be resolved. Master Morya began bombarding Elena with messages which she relayed to George. On May 20 the Mahatma pronounced: “Urusvati [Elena] is right. Manziarly should be told about friendship only.” This enigmatic message may have meant that while the Master would countenance friendship between the two love birds marriage was out of the question. The next day Morya weighted in again: “We don’t see marriage . . . Udraya has disobeyed the Order, stirred up the waves of old karma . . . a good lesson for Tamerlane [George].” Since Sina Lichtmann, Elena’s mouthpiece, was not present we learn very little more of what actually transpired between George and his parents. 

 

We do know that on May 25 Louis and Nettie Horch arrived in Paris for an extended stay. Apparently they and the Roerichs had planned beforehand to make a grand tour of the continent. A few days later the Roerichs, including George, and the Horchs set out to see the sights in France and then proceeded on to Italy and Switzerland. Mara was not invited. George’s parents may have wanted to separate the two so they could talk some sense into him without her around. Meanwhile Mara showered George with letters. By August she had apparently realized that the marriage was not going to happen, at least anytime soon.  “I can’t imagine my path without you,” she wrote George. “In a few years, maybe in Russia, we shall live together.” 

 

Not much more is known about the relationship between George and Mara, except for the fact that by the time the Roerichs returned to Paris the marriage was definitely off. It may have been a sore subject, the less said about the better. Popular semi-hagiographical biographies of the Roerichs make no mention whatsoever of the Manziarlys, George’s infatuation with Mara, or their proposed marriage. It’s as if the whole episode never occurred. One thing is for sure. When the Roerich family departed from France for India on November 16, 1923, George was with them and Mara remained behind. Not long afterwards Irma and her daughters, including Mara, themselves departed for India. They proceeded to Adyar, where they hoped to met up with Krishnamurti. Adyar had been on the itinerary of the Roerichs but then they changed their minds and the two families did not cross paths. 

 

Mara probably never saw George again after their last meeting in Paris. While in India she threw herself into her work, composing music for piano and orchestra. She finally completed the symphonic poem “Tamerlane”, which George had inspired her to write, but by then it had become, in the words of George’s biographer, “a hymn to unfulfilled love.” She eventually returned to Paris, where she lived until the outbreak of World War II, when she decamped to the United States. She ended up the Theosophical enclave in Ojai, California, where Krishnamurti would also take refuge. Famous American composer Aaron Copland (1900–1990) dedicated a song  to her entitled "Heart, We Will Forget Him", apparently a reference to George Roerich. Krishnamurti, who decades before had marked Mara as his disciple, transmigrated at Ojai on February 17, 1986. Mara transmigrated at Ojai on May 11, 1989, just a few months shy of her ninetieth birthday.

 

Mara never married and the available short biographies of her life make no mention of any relationships after George. George apparently entered into some sort of long-term conjugal relationship with Lyudmila Bogdanova, the Russian woman the Roerichs had hired in Ulaanbaatar as a cook and who, along with her sister Iraida, went on to serve the Roerich family for thirty-some years. This may have qualified as a common-law marriage. In any case, George never had any children. George and Mara had sacrificed their love for the sake of the Masters and the Great Plan. Perhaps Master Morya will unite them again in another lifetime. 

 

George Roerich

 

Mongolia | Baron von Ungern-Sternberg

Interesting story about a Relative Of Baron Von Ungern-Sternberg. I wrote at length about the Bloody Baron in False Lama of Mongolia and also in Wanders in the Khentii Mountains of Mongolia: The Source of the Amur River and the Birthplace of the Mongols.

The world-class psychopath and megalomaniac  Baron in his early years

Quote by the Bloody Baron: 

Depravity of revolution! . . . Has anyone ever thought of it besides the French philosopher, Bergson, and the most learned Tashi [Dalai] Lama in Tibet? In the Buddhistic and ancient Christian books we read stern predictions about the time when the war between the good and evil spirits must begin. Then there must come the unknown ‘Curse’ which will conquer the world, blot out culture, kill morality and destroy all the people. Its weapon is revolution. During every revolution the previously experienced intellect-creator will be replaced by the new rough force of the destroyer. He will place and hold in the first rank the lower instincts and desires. Man will be farther removed from the divine and the spiritual. The Great War proved that humanity must progress upward toward higher ideals; but then appeared that Curse which was seen and felt by Christ, the Apostle John, Buddha, the first Christian martyrs, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Goethe and Dostoyevsky. It appeared, turned back the wheel of progress and blocked our road to the Divinity. Revolution is an infectious disease and Europe making the treaty with Moscow deceived itself and the other parts of the world. The Great Spirit put at the threshold of our lives Karma, who knows neither anger nor pardon. He will reckon the account, whose total will be famine, destruction, the death of culture, of glory, of honor and of spirit, the death of states and the death of peoples. I see already this horror, this dark, mad destruction of humanity.

Relative of the Bloody Baron. “All these people [are] telling me I should reclaim the throne to Mongolia but I’m literally just a girl who drinks matcha.”

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Atas Bogd Uul

After Solongo’s Accident we continued south towards Atas Bogd Uul.

Crossing gravel flats with Atas Bogd Uul in the far distance (click on photos for enlargements)

Pass through the Arslan Khairkhan Hills

Faint trace of the ancient caravan trail—at one time probably a northern extension of the Silk Road—running between Atas Bogd Uul and Inges Uul.

Stone tripod used for cooking: a pot is placed on the top. 

Local herdsmen claim that Mongolian caravan men never used permanent pot rests like this. They would use three stones as a temporary pot holder, but they would always knock the stones aside before they moved on. These permanent pot holders, claim the local camel guys, were used by Chinese caravan men who traveled on the trail back at the end of the nineteenth century or earlier.

8842-foot Atas (Male Camel) Bogd Uul 

Ranger station south of Inges Uul where we stayed for two days

Ranger Station

6936-foot Inges (Female Camel) Uul, just to the east of Atas Bogd Uul. Inbetween Atas Bodg Uul and Inges Uul is Botgos (young camel) Uul (not visible on this photo). 

Horns of the so-called Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon polii). They are common around Atas Bogd and Inges mountains. 

Spring near where we camped

This was the first water source we encountered after leaving our starting point at Zakhyn Us 112 miles to the north, as the crow flies (longer by our route). We had to carry enough water on our camels for the five and half day trip here. The oasis around the spring is frequented by a Gobi Bear, whose sign we saw everywhere. The tracks of wolves, sheep, and wild asses were also seen around the spring. 

Site of a famous 1938 battle between Mongolian border guards and the notorious Kazakh bandit and warlord Osman. In the 1930s and 40s Osman roamed the steppe and deserts of northern Xinjiang Province, China, making periodic raids into Mongolia to seize livestock and women. 

At least seven Mongolian border guards were killed in the battle and buried on site. Their graves can be seen here. 

Monument to the battle

Sister Dulya, camp boss on the trip, preparing boortsog (fried bread) at the ranger station for our 112 mile trip (as the crow flies) back to Zakhyn Us, just east of Eej Khairkhan Mountain.

Solongo, chief cook and assistant camel wrangler on the trip, preparing boortsog. 

After a two day rest our camels were raring to get back home, 112 miles to the north.

Sister Dulya, still looking stylish after eight days on the trail, was raring to get back to Ulaanbaatar. First we had six long days of travel by camel to get back to our Starting Point at Zakhyn Us. 

Turkmenistan | Darwaza | Portal to Agharta

Update 06.28.25: Looks like the infamous Door to Hell In Turkmenistan Is About To Close. Will the King of Agharti be happy or sad?

Update: Turkmenistan Leader Drives Donuts Around 'Gateway to Hell' In Footage Following Death Rumors.

One of my main objectives while in Turkmenistan was visiting the ruins of Urgench, which had been trashed by the sons of Chingis Khan back in 1221. Urgench is 290 miles north of the capital of Ashgabat. It is possible to drive from the capital to Urgench in one day, but most tourists like myself prefer to drive to the Darwaza Crater, 150 miles north of Ashagabat, spend the night there, and then continue on to Urgench the next day.

The Darwaza Crater is widely touted as the Portal to Hell. Indeed, the word darwaza reportedly means “portal” in the Turkmani language. The portal is not, however, a natural phenomenon. It was created in 1971 when geologists accidentally drilled into a huge underground cavern filled with natural gas. The cavern collapsed, leaving a crater about 230 feet in diameter. To keep from poisoning the local environment the geologists set fire to the huge amounts of natural gas seeping from the crater. They apparently thought the gas would burn off in a few days or weeks. Instead, the gas has been burning ever since and the leakage shows no signs of abating. No one has offered an estimate on the value of the gas which goes up in flames here each day. Natural gas is so plentiful in Turkmenistan that no one seems to care. 

The crater is in the middle of the Karakum Desert. There are no facilities in the area. Like the thirty or forty other tourists who spent the night there, I brought my own tent and vittles. There were people from Russia, Germany, Austria, Australia, Hungary, and other sundry locales. The people from Australia said they they had come to Turkmenistan specifically to see the crater. They had driven from Ashgabat that day and were returning there the next morning. 

See Video of the Gate to Hell.

There are other reputed Gates to Hell, including One In Turkey (this Turkey video also has views of Darwaza). Thanks to Snuggles in Richmond VA for bringing this video to my attention.

 View from Space: Darwaza, the Gate to Hell, is the small dark spot in the middle, not the larger gray area (click on photos for enlargements).

 The Darwaza Crater is about 230 feet in diameter

 Darwaza Crater

People on the edge of Darwaza Crater. On the downwind side the heat emanating from the crater is almost unbearable.

Darwaza Crater at night: Dante would have loved this place.

There are rumors that the cavern which the geologists inadvertedly drilled into was an extension of Agharti (also spelled Agharta), the underground Kingdom described by Marquis Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre and Ferdinand Ossendowski. The King of Agharti was reportedly none too pleased by this incursion into his domain and has been in a snit ever since. See the King of Agharti’s Predictions. His threat to return to the surface of the earth in 2012 was not fulfilled, however, and at this point in time the Darwaza-Agharti connection must be relegated to the realm of pure speculation.

Italy | Venice | San Giorgio Maggiore | St. Stephan

Update: Saw in a headline that Jeff Bezos and his paramour got married, or at least held a ceremony, at San Giorgio Maggiore.

From Greece I wandered north to Venice. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, I am back at my old haunt, the We Crociferi. This is an old Jesuit monastery that has been remodeled into a hotel. They even stuck me in the same room, top floor, at the end of the hall, the most remote place in the whole immense pile. Apparently I am not cool enough to be mixed in with all the young hipsters who stay here.

We Crociferi on the right (click on photos for enlargements)

After throwing my portmanteau in my room I took the water bus to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, on an island of the same name  about a third of a mile south of St. Mark’s Square 

Domenico Dandolo, the leader of the Dandolo clan at the beginning of the twelfth century, had at least four sons: Pietro, Vitale, Bono and Enrico. He was the grandfather of the Enrico Dandolo—not to be confused with his uncle Enrico—who masterminded the Fourth Crusade and the 1204 Sack of Constantinople. Vitale oversaw the family’s business in Venice and Pietro became a monk at the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore. Bono managed the family business in the Venetian Quarter of Constantinople, which had been established by the Chrysobull of 1082. Enrico, as we shall soon see, became an important figure in the Church. Signatures of the Dandolos pop up on various documents at this time, attesting the rising status of the family. For example, in June 1107, Domenico and his son Vitale signed as witnesses to a document granting large donations to the Benedictine monastery at San Giorgio Maggiore. Later the year Domenico and his sons Vitale and Pietro served as witnesses to a document transferring ownership of properties in the Venetian Quarter in Constantinople to a church dignitary in the Venetian Lagoon. In February of 1113 Pietro witnessed a thirty-day loan of 130 lire to one Bona Kecii and her daughter Matilda. When the women were unable to pay up he also witnessed the foreclosure and seizure of the property.

Domenico’s son Bono, while managing the family business in the Venetian Quarter of Constantinople, was also involved in the translation of relics, “translation” being the technical term for moving relics from one place to another. Such “translations” were considered furta sacra, sacred theft, because according to Catholic belief at the time, a relic could not be moved unless the spiritual force associated with the relic allowed it to be moved. There were many example of relics which were apparently satisfied with their present location and thus resisted all attempts to move them. If attempts to move, or translate, the relic succeeded, this was prima facie evidence that it wanted to be moved. Thus while it may have appeared that the Venetians were stealing the relic they were actually performing the very pious act of carrying out the wishes of the relic itself. Ultimately, it was God’s Will that the relic in question would end up in the hands of whoever deserved it the most.

In 1107 or thereabouts his brother, the monk Pietro, arrived in the city to take over a post at a church owned by Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore. In the course of a conversation with a priest at another church nearby the latter let slip that within his church was hidden the body of Saint Stephan, Christianity’s first martyr (I had earlier visited the Church of St. Stephan in Iran). The two went to church and sure enough, the sweet smell often associated with the bodies of saints was soon detected emanating from the altar. They broke into the stone altar and discovered the coffin containing the body of Saint Stephan. Pietro spirited the body back to the Venetian Quarter and placed it in his own church until arrangements could be made to send it back to his monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. 

Meanwhile, word of the theft of the relic leaked out. The Byzantines were furious, but apparently they did not have the legal authority to enter the Venetian Quarter and remove the body from the sanctuary of the Venetian church. They did, however, make stern objections to the relic being sent back to Venice. So the relic remained in Pietro’s church for a year. Finally the Byzantines cooled down and the the matter of the theft was largely forgotten. Arrangements were made to ship the relic back to Venice by boat. Seventy-two Venetians, important men in the Venetian Quarter, escorted the body of Saint Stephan the Protomartyr to Venice. Among them were Bono Dandolo and Orio Dandolo, a relative of Bono’s. The boat arrived back in Venice in July 7, 1109 (or perhaps 1110), where it was met with great ceremony. The Doge himself oversaw the transport of the body to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, where it was placed in the monastery church. For the next six hundred years the acquisition of the relic was celebrated by an annual ceremony. For the Dandolo family the whole affair was yet another feather in their cap. The relics of Saint Tarasius had been brought back to Venice by the first Domenico Dandolo. Now his great-grandsons Pietro and Bono were instrumental in adding Saint Stephan the Protomartyr to Venice’s great collection of Christian relics.

The original monastery and attendant church on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore was destroyed by an earthquake on Christmas Day, 1223. A new monastery was rebuilt and the church itself rebuilt or remodeled at least twice, and then starting in 1560 under went major revisions according to the plans of the great architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). Palladio’s neo-classical facade of the church, visible across the waters from the area of the Ducal Palace, is now one of the most iconic sights of Venice, and perhaps just as famous for eliciting one of art historian John Ruskin’s most memorable outpourings of bile: “It is impossible to conceive a design more gross, more barbarous, more childish in conception, more servile in plagiarism, more insipid in result, more contemptible under every point of rational regard.” 

The current status of the relics of St. Stephen supposedly translated here from Constantinople by Bono Dandolo and his compatriots remains somewhat unclear. The relics were presumably present when famous English peregrinator Thomas Coryat visited the church in 1608, two years before the Palladian facade was completed: “I was at the Monastery of the Benedictine Monks called Saint Georges, which is situated on a very delectable Island about half a mile [sic: Coryat did not have the benefit of Google Earth; the distance from the Mol in front of the Piazzetta San Marco to the front of the church is 0.28 miles] Southward from Saint Marks place. It is a passing sumptuous place, and the fairest and richest Monastery without comparison in all Venice . . .” Coryat was told the relics of “Saint Stephen the first Christian Martyr” were “under a goodly Altar of red marble . . . ” but he did to see them himself. He was apparently referring to an altar of red marble still found in the north transept of the church. Above the altar is the painting “Martyrdom of Saint Stephen” attributed  to Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto. No English language signage indicates that St. Stephen’s relics are located here, and no modern-day guidebook I am aware of mentions them. The docent will say only that the “relics may be in the altar.” As is the wont of his tribe, he refuses to elaborate. 

St. Stephan and St. George, the island’s namesake, are memorialized by full-length statues in niches between the columns on the monument facade of the church. On either side of the columns are sarcophagi, topped by busts, of Doge Tribuno Memmo, who along with Orso Dandolo and 133 other prominent citizens of Venice signed to document which established the Benedictine monastery on the island back in the year 982, and Sebastiano Ziani  (r. 1172–1178), who, as you may recall,  brought about the reconciliation of Pope Alexander III (c. 1100–1181) and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1122–1190) which resulted in the 1177 Treaty of Venice.

Palladian facade of San Giorgio Maggiore

Palladian facade of San Giorgio Maggiore. Ruskin was utterly appalled.

Palladian facade of San Giorgio Maggiore. The sarcophagi, topped by busts, of Doge Tribuno Memmo and Doge Sebastiano Ziani  are to the left and right of the columns.

St. Stephen (left) and St. George (right)

St. Stephen

St. George

Apparently this is Coryat’s “goodly Altar of red marble” which may contain the relics of St. Stephen. Above the altar is the “Martyrdom of Saint Stephen” attributed  to Jacopo Tintoretto and/or his school.

Detail of the “Martyrdom of Saint Stephen”