Terelji National Park
by Adrian
Terelji National Park
Mongolia August 29, 2005 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 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, Tibetian 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. 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, 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. http://www.travbuddy.com/Adrian_Liston |
