Mongolia | USA | Gunj and Friends

Just had an interesting video chat with International Adventuress Gunj and her friend Denise Zabalaga, a photo-journalist who has Worked in Afghanistan and many other places. They were in Gunj’s luxurious penthouse apartment near Union Square in downtown Manhattan, just a stone’s throw from the Strand Bookstore, and I was in my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi. Talk about inequality! Anyhow, Denise related how she had been searching on the internet for information about Central Asia and came across my blog, which she had never seen before. Checking a few posts she was flabbergasted to see a photo of her friend, who we know of as Gunj, but who she knows of under a different alias. She contacted Gunj and confirmed that it was indeed her in the photos on my blog.  Now Denise was staying in Gunj’s apartment during a whirlwind visit to NYC and I was able to link up with both of them via video-chat. Small world! 

Gunj and Denise via Video-Chat

They had just returned from a night out on the town during which they cut a wide swath through lower Manhattan, leaving a string of dazed and confused males in their wake.

Gunj in one of her many disguises

Tibet | Mindroling | Dorje Drak

Wandered down to Tibet and visited Mindroling, the monastery which had been heavily damaged by the Zungarian Mongols who invaded Tibet in 1718 under the leadership of Tseveen Ravdan, the nephew of Galdan Bolshigt, who in the 1680s had led the Zungarian Mongols against the Khalkh Mongols, at that time headed by Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegen of Mongolia, who was the great grandson of Avtai, the founder of Erdene Zuu. The Zungarians were hacked off that the Khoshot Mongol Khan Lhazang had effectively removed the 6th Dalai Lama from power and replaced him with what many Tibetans felt was a pretender 6th Dalai Lama. The Zungarians invaded Tibet with the idea of removing the pretender and installing Kalsang Gyatso, then a boy monk at Kumbum Monastery near current day Xining in Qinghai Province, China, as the Seventh Dalai Lama. As staunch supporters of the Dalai Lama’s Gelug sect they had a particular beef with the Nyingma sect and set about trashing and looting Nyingma monasteries. Thus Mindroling, a Nyingma stronghold, was heavily damaged. It was later rebuilt or at least refurbished using the distinctive local stone. Mindroling escaped destruction by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and thus survives as an unusual example of the fine stone work used in early Tibetan monasteries.

Building at Mindroling showing distinctive stonework From Mindroling we took the ferry across the Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River.
Ferry across the TsangpoPassengers on the ferryOn the north side of the river we visited the tomb of Yeshe Tsogyel, the consort of Padmasambhava, who in the eight century had founded Samye Monastery.
Stupa of Yeshe Tsogyel

Then we continued on to the village of Dratang, where we spent New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at the Dratang Guest House, locally famous for its excellent dumpling soup.

Dratang Guest HouseThen back across the Tsangpo by ferry and down the valley to yet another ferry across the Tsangpo to Dorje Drak Monastery.
Ferry to Dorje DrakDorje DrakLike Mindroling, Dorje Drak was a Nyingma Monastery and was almost totally destroyed by the Zungarian Mongols in 1718. It was rebuilt, only to be destroyed again during the Cultural Revolution. It has now been rebuilt yet again.
Dorje Drak

We arrived just in time to see the completion of a sand mandala dedicated to Yama, the Lord of Death.

Sand MandalaThe monks conducted ceremonies connected with the mandala from about five to ten o’clock in the in the morning, then in the late afternoon they did a ceremonial dance in the courtyard, and then more chanting from about seven to ten in the evening.
Ceremonial DanceWe stayed in a guest room at the monastery and were very well treated by the monks, who plied us continually with butter tea.

USA | Dalai Lama

It turns out that the Dalai Lama was not summoned to the White House to make a Solomonic judgment about the Paternity of Conan O’Brien’s Baby, as I previously believed. For an intriguing account of what did go down see How to Greet the Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama leaving the White House. It’s a shame the White House doesn’t have a better garbage man.

Mongolia | Non-Human Origins of Dambijantsan

Given the mystery surrounding his birthplace, his age, and many of the subsequent events of his life it is perhaps to be expected that in Mongolia a supernatural version of Dambijantsan Mythologem would eventually arise. This tale was told to me by a well-known and highly respected lama in Ulaan Baatar. When this lama’s teacher was a young man he had as his own teacher a lama who as a boy had lived with his parents at Dambijantsan’s Final Stronghold in the Black Gobi Desert in what is now Gansu Province, China. This lama related that Dambijantsan, despite his ferocious demeanor, liked to play with children. On sunny afternoons he would sit down outside, take off his shirt, and let a whole passel of small children climb over his body and hang on his neck. One day while horsing around in this manner our informant noticed that Dambijantsan had no belly button. He did not realize the significance at this at the time, but later he heard stories about beings who did not have belly buttons because they had not been born to a human mother and were not human beings themselves. Later in life this man came to  believe that Dambijantsan was not actually a human being.

Ja Lama: Human or not?

My own informant explained to me that this belief in entities who only appear to be human beings is fairly widespread in Mongolia. The telltale sign is the lack of a belly-button and the inevitable uncertainly surrounding the being’s family and origins. In the past such appearances were uncommon, but they did happen, he claimed. According to persistent rumors, Dondovdulam, the first wife of the Eighth Bogd Gegeen, was one of these non-human entities (this is of course hotly disputed by those who claim she came from an ordinary family at Baldan Bereeven Khiid).

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Dondovdulam: Belly Button or not?

So what are these entities, and from where do they originate? As best my informant could explain, they are thought forms which have been manifested as material objects in the three-dimensional world by some power or force, the exact nature of which is unknown to us. They are created to accomplish some specific task, the ultimate goal of which is not always clear to human beings. As manifested entities, these beings lack the life story of a human being.

Thus the tales about Dambijantsan’s birth in Kalmykia, Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, China, or elsewhere were blinds, perhaps created by in part Dambijantsan himself, to hide his true, non-human origins. The uncertainly over his birth date; the observation by some that he did not appear to age over time; the magical acts for which he later became famous, his alleged immunity to bullets and the belief, widespread during his lifetime, that he could never be killed by ordinary means were all a result of his non-human origins. Even the fact that he was eventually killed is tempered by the belief on the part of some that his material body was allowed to be destroyed because it was no longer of use to its creators but that his thought form continues to exist into the present. It might be added in conclusion that these entities no longer appear in material form in Mongolian today, mainly because the powers which produce them have disappeared or are at least in abeyance, but that in the future they may well occur again.

I do not present this theory here necessarily because I believe it; I do so only to demonstrate the incredible breadth of the tales which have accrued around the life of Dambijantan and which continue to be believed by at least some people down to the present day. But when these tales, bizarre as they may seem, are told by the light of a campfire at One of Dambijantsan’s Former Haunts, deep in the Gobi Desert eighty miles from any other human beings, they are not so easily dismissed. 

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Ninth of the Nine Nines | Ерийн дулаан болно

The ninth and last of the Nine-Nines—nine periods of nine days each, each period marked by some description of winter weather—began on March 3. This last Nine is Ерийн дулаан болно: the time when warm weather starts, signaling the end of winter. We did have a warm spell, with temperatures up in the mid 20sºF / –6ºC in the afternoon, but this morning it was back down to Minus 30ºF / –34ºC and more cold weather is expected over the weekend. But in the afternoons my finely tuned olfactory organs detect a whiff of spring in the air, so we can start looking forward to the next big event in Zaisan Tolgoi, the Appearance of the First Wild Flower. 

And speaking of big events, in case you have not noticed the Earth Has Been Rocked Off Its Axis by the earthquake in Chile. This happens to coincide with the book I am now reading:

It cannot be said we are not living in exciting times!

Mongolia | More UFO News

Now an Alleged UFO Base has been spotted in Mongolia! Maybe we should also be taking a Closer Look at the Former Hideouts of Dambijantsan.

Mongolia | UFO Crash Lands

A UFO has Crashed near Ulaan Baatar:

Two objects reportedly crashed to the ground near Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia on Feb. 19, 2010. The first object, according to the report on the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Witness Database, weighed 10 kg, while the second larger object weighed approximately 2 tons. Other than that, there's not a lot of information available about the objects. But of course, UFOers are having a field day, calling the image, above, that accompanied the report a "leaked UFO crash" picture. But the object looks suspiciously like a rocket or jet engine, or perhaps a rocket nose cone. Objects that crash to Earth likely have a very terrestrial origin.  

Alien spaceship
or Mongolian “Balloon Boy” stunt gone awry?

One thing for sure: if this object, whatever its origins, had pancaked a ger or plowed into the side of an apartment building the results would not have been pretty. Keep in mind, too, that Unidentified Flying Objects are just that: objects moving through space which cannot readily be identified. That  does not necessarily mean that they are extraterrestrial.

USA | Latest News

I have a hard time following the news coming out of the States. I don’t watch television, so I have to rely totally on the internet. I don’t actually click on most of the stories, but just from the headlines I gather there have been a lot of problems recently. It seems that Tiger Woods and Conan O’Brien crashed a party at the White House and after a night together in the Lincoln Bedroom Conan O’Brien ended up pregnant. Then John Edwards came forward and claimed that he was actually the father of Conan O’Brien’s baby.  But then Jay Leno announced that he was in fact the father of Conan O’Brien’s baby and that they intended to get married and have a talk show together. And now Lady Gaga has come forth and proclaimed that the baby is a result of a threesome between herself, Tiger Woods, and Conan O’Brien but that she is the father of the baby, Woods having teed up at the wrong hole. The latest news is that Obama invited the Dalai Lama, the current incarnation of King Solomon, to the White House and asked him to make a judgment as to who is actually the father of the baby.  At least this is what I gather from the headlines. What a mess! I’m glad I live in Mongolia. The only problem here is that 2,000,000 Head of Livestock have died over the winter and thousands of families have been left destitute.

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Seventh of the Nine-Nines | Doviin Tolgoi Borlono

The seventh of the so-called Nine-Nines—nine periods of nine days each, each period marked by some description of winter weather—began on February 14, which coincidentally was the first day of the Male Iron Tiger Year here in Mongolia. The actual moment of the New Moon was 10:52 a.m. on the 14th, so according to some interpretations the New Year began then. The Seventh of the Nine-Nines is Doviin Tolgoi  Borlono, the “time when the tops of the hills become brown.” Around the beginning of the year it was still going down to the Minus 20sºF / –28sºC at night.  It has warmed up a bit since then but I have not actually seen any brown hilltops yet. Yesterday it got up to 18ºF / –7º C in the afternoon and I did see some puddles of water along the road where the sun was hitting hard—a precursor of the eighth of the Nine-Nines—the “time when puddles appear on the ground”—which begins on February 23. Expect some real changes in the weather around the Full Moon on March 1.

This should provide a bit of relief from the disastrous winter experienced in some parts of Mongolia. According to Some Accounts more than two million head of livestock have died already. The only good news is that some parts of the country seem to have escaped the worst of the winter onslaught. Recent visitors to Khamariin Khiid in Dornogov Aimag and Sukhebaatar Aimag report that livestock losses in those areas have been no worse than usual.

Mongolia | Sixth Nine-Nine | Zuraasan Zam Garna

The sixth of the so-called Nine-Nines—nine periods of nine days each, each period marked by some description of winter weather—began on February 5th. This is Zuraasan Zam Garnai, the Time When the Trail of the Road Appears. This description would seem to indicate a slight warming from the previous Nine-Nines, a time when well-traveled trails become free from ice and snow. Indeed, on the night before the first day of this Nine-Nine, the temperature did not get below 0ºF / –18ºC for probably the first time this year. We did, however, get three or more inches of snow here in Zaisan Tolgoi that night, along with extreme winds. Three of the windows in my hovel blew open during the night and the next morning I had little inch-high snow drifts on my wool carpets. Over 400 People Were Lost or Trapped in the snow storm. Since then temperatures have plunged, going down into the Minus 30sºF every night. So the trails have definitely not reappeared. And the Forecast for Tsagaan Sar, the Lunar New Year, on the 14th, is not much warmer. This has been a gruesome winter. Reportedly 1.8 million head of livestock have died so far, and the number is expected to rise significantly. Figures of 20 million have been tossed around, more than half of all livestock in Mongolia, but if this happens it might as well be the Apocalypse for Mongolia. As mentioned before, I am unable to leave Zaisan Tolgoi at the moment so I cannot report on what is going on in the countryside. There is a YouTube Video: Nomads Face Hunger Crisis.