Mongolia | Khovd Aimag | Dambijantsan’s Winter Camp

I have already written about the arrival of Dambijantsan in Western Mongolia in 1911 and how he established a Winter Camp on the Dund Tsenkher Gol near Mankhan, in Khovd Aimag.

In 1999 and again in 2007 I visited Dambijantsan’s camp on the Dund Tsenkher Gol, both times accompanied by Professor Baasankhüü of the Khovd branch of the National University of Mongolia. In 1972 the Professor had come to the Dund Tsenkher Gol with an eighty-two year old man named Jigmid who had been a follower of Dambijantsan and who had camped with him here. From Jigmid the Professor was able to get a fairly detailed account of events here on the Dund Tsenkher. Jigmid related to the professor that Dambijantsan liked to stay apart from his followers and soldiers. His own ger was on a high bank to the left of the Dund Tsenkher Gol, facing downstream, close to the mouth of a canyon from which the swift-flowing river emerges.

Dund Tsenkher Gol looking towards the Gov-Altai Mountains

Dund Tsenkher Gol looking downstream towards Mankhan

The campgrounds of his followers was about a mile farther on downstream, on the same side of the river. Jigmid said that Dambijantsan always liked to have a mountain or steep hillside behind his ger or tent, which would make it hard for enemies to approach from the rear, and an clear, unobstructed view in front, making it difficult for anyone to approach undetected from that direction. These conditions were met here; the ramparts of the Mongol-Altai rise directly behind his ger site and in front a bare plain stretches for ten miles or more.

Dambijantsan’s ger site on the left bank of the Dund Tsenkher

For further protection, Dambijantsan had a stone wall constructed around his ger, the remnants of which can still be seen today.

Closer look at Dambijantsan’s ger site

Oddly enough, right next to his ger site are several well-preserved Bronze Age tombs. I asked the Professor if it was customary to set up a ger so near to ancient tombs like this, and he said it wasn’t, but that Dambijantsan apparently did not concern himself about such matters.

Bronze Age tombs near Dambijantsan’s ger site

Jigmid had also said that on the steep hillside behind the ger site Dambijantsan had constructed stone watchtowers. Several heaps of rock of the hillsides may be the remains of these watchtowers.

The campgrounds of his followers was on level ground, directly on front of his ger and about a mile away. Dambijantsan was a stickler for neatness and order and the camp was always spotlessly clean. He did not even like loose rocks lying around where people might stumble over them, and when his followers weren’t doing anything else he had them gather up these rocks and put them in piles. These piles of rock can still be seen there today.

Campground of Dambijantsan’s followers

Piles of rocks gathered by Dambijantsan’s followers

A German traveler in the region at the time, Herman Consten, also visited to the site and gave a description in his book Weideplätze der Mongolen: “The Mongolian camp makes a surprisingly good impression . . . the tents and gers are pitched in a double circular line around the centre of the camp. . . The path which leads to the ger of the Ja Lama is astonishingly clean like the camp.” He added that the “the ger of Ja Lama, (the Two Camel Lama) stands out from from the other gers by the white of its costly felt and its large size.”

Dambijantsan may have intended to establish a permanent base here, or even found a town. In the spring of 1912 he had his followers plant crops in newly-established fields watered by irrigation ditches from the nearby Tsenkher Gol. The traces of these fields and irrigation ditches can still be seen there today. As it turned out, his early attempts to establish some kind of community here was only a dry run for his later settlements and strongholds.

Irrigation ditch allegedly built by Dambijantsan’s followers

Ovoo marking the location of Dambijantsan’s Winter Camp

An ever larger contingent of disciples and followers who had fallen under Dambijantsan’s charismatic spell soon gravitated at this camp. Not all were there voluntarily. In his ger Dambijantsan kept a thirteen year old boy as a servant. Treated as a virtual slave and repeatedly beaten for minor offenses, the boy wanted desperately to escape, but he lived in mortal fear of Dambijantsan. Soon he devised a plan to kill his master. Every morning Dambijantsan would go out and inspect his soldiers and then come back and sit on a stool behind the stove and drink tea. The boy decided that when Dambijantsan sat down he would hand him a cup of tea with one hand and with the other grab the axe that was kept in the woodbox beside the stove and break open his skull with it. Dambijantsan came in and sat down, then grabbed the axe himself and hit the boy along the side of the head with the flat side, knocking him down. “Did you really think you could kill me with an axe?” he asked the boy. The boy was sure he was about to die, but instead Dambijantsan handed him a Buddhist scripture wrapped in a yellow cloth and said, “Our paths in life are quite different. You must go your way and I will go mine. Take this book and go to Khovd and became a monk. But never let me see you again or I will kill you.” The boy did as he was told and joined a monastery. He eventually became famous for blessing new Russian jeeps. Before he died in the late 1980s he told people in Khovd that Dambijantsan had known his intentions because he had been able to read his mind. This one just one of the many stories of Dambijantsan’s mind-reading skills which continue to be told down to the present day.


Around this time Dambijantsan became famous for a whole host of magical abilities. According to the Diluv Khutagt:

Ja Lama claimed to be able to cure sickness with gun magic. This is a very old form of magic. The sickness is reported to the magician. The magician thinks about the disease. Then he fires a gun in the direction of the sick man. The sick man may be hundreds of miles away, but he hears the report, and at that moment he is cured.

Diluv Khutagt again:

Ja Lama also did other kinds of gun magic. Each of Ja Lama’s bullets had a Tibetan letter on it—I don’t know which letter. It was reported that a camp was raided by a wolf. Half of the sheep stampeded into the night. The shepherds ran and told Ja Lama. “I’ll fix that,” he said, and he lifted his gun and fired from the door of his tent. “Go and look in that direction tomorrow morning,” he said. The next morning they went and looked and saw the sheep all grazing peacefully, and the wolf lying dead beside them. They cut open the wolf ’s body and found one of Ja Lama’s bullets in it. After that everyone feared and respected Ja Lama.

To this day variations of this story are told by old people in Khovd Aimag who claim they themselves heard about it from eyewitnesses who had actually met Dambijantan. Usually, however, they have Dambijantan shooting his gun several times through the toono, or round hole, in the roof of a ger and not out the door, and no mention is made of a Tibetan letter on the bullets. Old people near Bayan Tooroi, in Gov-Altai Aimag, told me the same story, claiming that Dambijantsan had performed this same trick while passing through the area in 1918.

Professor Baasankhüü