I am writing this entry from a Ger camp, in Terelji National Park. The last two days have been fantastic, it has been a real Mongolian experience.
Yesterday I woke up early (everyone else was feeling manky from the party, especially Jodie, who threw up during the night) so I went for a walk around Ulaan Baatar. Most of the building were quite old, and falling apart, largely built in a Soviet style, except with the circular Mongolian flavour. After meeting up with Luke we walked to Sukhabaator Square, the centre of Ulaan Baatar, which is surrounded by the main cultural and political buildings. In the centre is a statue of Damdin Sukhbaatar, the nationalist who gained Soviet help to achieve independence from the Chinese in 1921, and is still considered the cultural hero, after only Chingis Khan. The Square contains Sukhbaatar's mausoleum, but this is closed at the moment since his face fell off.
In the afternoon we went to Gandantegchenling Monastery, and I learnt about Mongolia's Buddhist history. The complex contained many small temples and prayer wheels. We saw the library, with over a million sutras in Mongolian, Tibetan and Sanskrit, also some 16th century surgical instruments. Funnily enough the monks in there were playing pool on the computer. We also saw Dedanpovran, which was built for a visit by the 13th Dali Lama in 1904. The most impressive was Migjed Janraisig, a temple for Janraisig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion (a bodhisattva is a soul who has reached enlightenment but has still chosen to continue reincarnation in order to help others, if I remember my buddhism correctly). It contains an enormous statue in the middle, made of copper and gold and precious stones. I thought it was the largest statue I have ever seen (it is 26.5 metres), but the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok is actually larger, this one just looks so big because it is standing. The original was destroyed by the Soviets in 1938, melted down for bullets in Leningrad. The current statue was only reproduced in 1996. It is hollow and filled with scripture. I walked around the statue, and spun all the prayer wheels in a clockwise direction. Of course prayer is no more than inner thought, but I thought it would be respectful for me to take the opportunity for my own thoughts. If gods did exist, I could never worship one which required worship for reward. I could however respect one which rewarded service to humanity.
This monastery is the only one to survive the Soviet times, out of the 900 Mongolian monasteries.
After the disintegration of the Mongol empire in the 1400s, missionaries from Tibet converted Mongolia to Buddhism, and Mongolia became the centre of Yellow Buddhism. We went to Bogd Khaan Winter Palace, where the Mongolian kings lived (it was built between 1893 and 1903). I hadn't realised that the Mongolian king was a reincarnated Buddhist king, with each new king being a two year old child found as the reincarnation of the previous king, like the Dali Lama. The new king was always found in China, as Mongolia was a puppet state of China until the final king Jebtzun Danbq Hutaht VIII. There were many tapestries of the Buddhist gods, I thought it was interesting that the Protection King of the North had a magical white rat that always spat out precious stones.
In the evening we went to a Mongolian cultural show. The traditional Mongolian costume and dances were very Thai, which surprised me - I had picked it to be a fusion of Russian and Chinese, but I guess that since both Mongolian and Thai culture have a common foundation in Tibetan culture it makes sense. There was throat singing, which was amazing, and showed the shamanist edge to the otherwise Buddhist culture. You could never believe the sounds they were able to make. I have heard throat singing before, with Jodie in Montreal, where the Inuit play it as a game. Two girls press their noses together and throat sing until one of them laughs, the other person wins. So they throat sing while rolling their eyes at each other and pulling faces. This was more serious, accompanied by the Morin Huur (an instrument which was introduced to Europe and evolved into the violin). The other really impressive part was the contortionist, which is traditional Mongolian. The girl was did it was simply amazing, able to completely fold her body over in every direction and support her entire body with her teeth.
Afterwards we went to Modern Nomads, a cafe that employs homeless teenagers and teaches them skills, giving the profits to their support. It was a great place, but difficult to find traditional Mongolian vegetarian food, as many dishes contained sheep spine meat or horse meet. I had mushroom soup and Chingis beer.
Before bed I tried writing up my diary, but the entire internet cafe blacked out 50 minutes later, so I lost everything.
Terelj National Park
Today we left Ulaan Baatar to drive out to the Ger camp in Terelji. We drove through the most beautiful landscape - green pastures and rocky outcrops, with gers and horse herds wandering. We stopped to ride Bactrian camels and drink airag (fermented mare's milk, it wasn't too bad, just like warm sour yoghurt, the Mongolian drink it nearly exclusively from children, drinking up to ten litres a day). We passed a Shaman's rock, walking around it clockwise three times, adding a stone to the pile on each rotation to make our wish come true. Vultures circled by overhead on thermal currents.
The Ger camp itself is in the most gorgeous valley, it is times like these that I am glad I am a photographer more than a writer, to capture the essence in a picture rather than to fail through words. The valley rings with the song of circadas and crickets, there are marmots throughout the camp and kites fly overhead. A heard of yaks wandered in at one point, horses later on. The weather is amazing, all sun, green grass and trees, blue sky.
Angela and I went for a walk around the camp, then we had dinner and all went to play billiards and "donkey" table tennis - a game Katherine's family made up for Christmas, and that everyone enjoyed. Playing it after a couple of beers and rounds, John and Troy (who were both excellent) careened off and slammed into walls a few times. Karen was very competitive and gave me the evil eye when I managed to give her a nasty shot.
Nemo, our guide, told us a Mongolian joke. A guy goes to the urologist and gets an x-ray. The doctor comes out and says "You are very lucky, you have three testicles". The next day the guy is sitting next to his friend and says "Between us we have five testicles". The friend looks surprised and says, "You only have one?"
I am in a Ger with Angela (who has food poisoning) and Monica. It is beautiful and ornate, with our oven in the middle (lighted for the cold night ahead), and the beds around the edge. It is made with canvas on the outside, a layer of felt, and then green silk on the inside. The supports are all carved and painted yellow, orange and red and rays of the sun.
Friday, September 2, 2005 at 3:58PM 
