Mongolia | Khovd Aimag | Baatar Khairkhan Uul

Baatar Khairkhan Uul  is a small mountain standing alone on the steppe 4.7 miles from downtown Khovd, just beyond the airport. It is clearly visible when you arrive in Khovd by airplane. Before 1912 Baatar Khairkhan Uul had two different names: Taliin Khairkhan Uul and Tsogt Khairkhan Uul. After 1912 the mountain was renamed Baatar Khairkhan Uul in honor of Magsarjav, one of the four military commanders during the attack on the Chinese Fortress in Khovd in 1912. After the city had been seized he was awarded the title of Khatan Baatar (warrior); hence Baatar Khairkhan Uul.

Baatar Khairkhan Uul stands alone on the steppe south of Khovd City

Baatar Khairkhan Uul 

Magsarjav, (1877-1927) was born in the banner of the Itgemjit Beis of Sain Noyon Khan Aimag. His father was a minor nobleman, but the family was not considered well-to-do.  Although thought to be a khuvilgaan, or incarnation of a minor Buddhist hierarch in western Mongolia, he apparently never considered a religious vocation. Magsarjav had been the Bogd Khan’s representative in Khovd City when Mongolian independence had been declared and had presented the Amban with the ultimatum to surrender the Khovd fortress and return to China. He had to sneak out of Khovd to avoid arrest after that affair and thus no doubt had own score to settle with the Amban. He appeared to have had little military experience, however, and one source calls him “an untried youth,” although he was thirty-five in 1912. 

On the north side of the mountain, visible from the airport, is a large depiction of the familiar Soyombo, the head symbol of the Soyombo alphabet designed by Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia. This sign also occurs on the Mongolian flag, Mongolian currency, and innumerable other places. 

Soyombo Symbol on Baatar Khairkhan Uul

On the rocks at the base of the hill are what Professor Baasankhüü of Khovd, who accompanied me to the site, says are Bronze Age petroglyphs, including depictions of ibex, sheep, elk, deer, tigers or leopards, wolves, and, interestingly, a turtle. (He dates the Bronze Age to about 2000-5000 BP.) There are also Tibetan inscriptions from the seventeenth century, Sanskrit inscriptions, and  inscriptions in vertical script Mongolian, one of which says, “If you pray under this mountain you will be forgiven for the sins of 1000 years.” (According to the translation of the Professor, who reads vertical script Mongolian perfectly).

During the Siege of Khovd in 1912, Magsarjav camped near the mountain with his contingent of troops. He also maintained an observation post on the summit from which he could watch what was going on in Khovd. According to various accounts he also had monks perform chanting ceremonies on the summit of the hill to ensure the success of the upcoming battle.

It was at the base of Baatar Khairkhan Uul that Magsarjav performed the notorious "Blood Ceremony” in preparation for the attack on the Manchu Fortress in Khovd City. During the ceremony, which was meant to encourage the troops, a Chinese servant who had been captured in the city had his still-beating heart ripped from his chest. The Mongol war banners were then ceremoniously anointed with his blood. A man named Samand Baatar, who was one of Magsarjav’s soldiers, was an eyewitness to the ceremony. In 1970 he described the event in detail to Professor Baasankhüü of Khovd. It is widely believed that Dambijantsan, The Notorious Ja Lama, took part in the Blood Ceremony here at Baatar Khairkhan Uul. Samand Baatar maintained, however, that Dambijantsan was not present at Magsarjav’s ceremony, although he did reportedly perform his own Blood Ceremony at his camp on the Dund Tsenkher Gol near Mankhan.

Not until we had left Baatar Khairkhan Uul and were halfway back to Khovd did I realize I had forgotten to pray at the base of the hill.  

Bronze Age Petroglyphs

Bronze Age Petroglyphs and Vertical Script Mongolian inscriptions

Bronze Age Petroglyphs

Bronze Age Petroglyphs

Bronze Age Petroglyphs and Tibetan script

Bronze Age Petroglyphs

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

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Camel Trip | Approaching Atas Bogd Uul

After Solongo’s Fall From Her Camel we rode until the sun went down and then camped for the night. The next morning we were up before dawn, since we still had two long days of riding to reach our destination south of Atas Bogd Uul.

 Camp Boss Sister Dulya supervising the loading of a camel

  Camp Boss Sister Dulya signs off on a perfectly loaded camel 

Sister Dulya ready to ride

Riding into black shale hills

 Typical black shale hills of the Gobi

 After passing through the black shale hills we emerged on a huge gravel flat. This is the view looking west. 

 Crossing the gravel flat. You can’t tell it from this photo, but the wind was blowing a relentless  sixty miles an hour. 

 Looking south across the grave flats toward Atas Bogd Uul, just visible in the distance.  

Atas Bogd Uul from the southern edge of the gravel flats. In the foreground is a range of hills topped by 4,705-foot Arslan Khairkhan Uul, so named because the peak is said to resemble a crouching lion (arslan). 

 Approaching the Arslan Khairkhan Hills 

  Although still smarting from the fall from her camel, Solongo was able to build a fire and brew up fresh tea during our tea break, in this case A Superb 2003 Vintage Puerh. 

Pass through the Arslan Khairkhan Hills

Near the pass through the Arslan Khairkhan Hills

Beyond the Arslan Khairkhan Hills is a wide strip and sand and gravel desert.

  Continuing on  across the sand and gravel desert . . . Solongo is riding on top of a load on one of the pack camels. Her camel had ran off the day before. 

Taking a break 

We camped for the night just east of 8,842-foot Atas Bogd Uul, a sentinel visible for hundreds of miles around. 

Mongolia | Khövsgöl Aimag | Darkhad Depression #4

After our late lunch we continue northwest up the valley of the Ikh Cöögt towards 8,550-foot Deed Khets Davaa. The snow-drift lined pass is broad and long, a miniature plateau actually, almost a mile long. Finally we come to an ovoo, seventy feet lower than the highest point of the pass, which overlooks the Buural Gol valley. From here we walk our horses down through a larch forest just over 1300 vertical feet to the banks of the Buural Gol, a major tributary of the Khoogin Gol, whose source is our next desination. The Buural Gol starts about five miles from here, just northwest of Belchir Uul.The Mungaragiin Gol, which we have just come from starts just to the west of Belchir Uul. Another river, the Delger Mörön, starts just south of Belchir Uul and flows southwestward to eventually combine with the Ider to form the Selenge Gol, Lake Baikal’s largest tributary. Thus at the base of Belchir Uul, the nexus of the knot of mountains we are in, begin rivers which flow both into both the Shishigt-Kyzyl-Khem-Yenisei and the Ider-Selenge-Angara-Yenisei branches of the Yenisei River System.

Looking up the Buural Gol Valley from the western end of Deed Khets Davaa (click on photos for enlargements)

Upper Buural Gol Valley

Beginning the descend into the valley of the Buural Gol

Looking toward the source of the Buural Gol. Belchir Uul is hidden between the ridges to the left.

It occurs to me that the area we are in might well qualify as the “Heart of Asia.” Now I admit that the epithet “the Heart of Asia” is much overworked. The seed of this chestnut might well be Sir Francis “Guns to Lhasa” Younghusband’s 1896 The Heart of a Continent.” It may have reached its full flowering in Nicholas Roerich’s 1929 Heart of Asia and continues to bloom in titles like The Lost Heart of Asia and The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia and The Heart of Asia: A History of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian Khanates from the Earliest Times and Through the Heart of Asia: Over the Pamïr to India. If I had the time and inclination I could compile a list of dozens more books and articles which somehow manage to drag in the phrase “the heart of Asia.” Indeed, years ago I had made a silent vow that when writing about this area I would never, under any circumstances, resort to the phrase “the heart of Asia.” But if any place actually deserves the epithet “the heart of Asia”—or at least that part of Asia north of Himalayas—it is this knot of mountains centered around Belchir Uul. On its slopes begin rivers which feed both major branches of the Yenisei River System, the largest north-flowing river in the world and the main artery of northern Asia.

I am still ruminating on this as we head down the Buural Valley. Soon we come upon a hunter’s shelter made a logs where Batmönkh says we will stop for the night. Hunters from Ulaan Uul come here in winter time to hunt deer, he says. He himself has stayed here in his younger days, when he was an avid hunter, but he says that now he now longer hunts. Immediately claiming the shelter for myself I spread out my carpet and sleeping bag inside, then get a fire going up brew and up a much needed pot of Yunnan Black. Actually is it the time of the day for Formosa Oolong, but after the strenuous descent on foot from Deed Khets Davaa I thought something a bit more robust and reinvigorating was called for.

We all sit and drink tea as Nergui prepares dinner. She points out that I neglected to bring a spatula along with my cooking gear. She had been using the dipper as a spatula but it really was not satisfactory for her culinary endeavors. Not to worry, says Batmönkh, he will make a spatula. First he cuts out a foot-long section of a log with his axe, then splits the section in two. From one of the halves he splits off an inch-thick slab. This he roughly shapes with an axe. Then with one of my Xinjiang Black Steel Knives that he has taken a liking to (I had fortuitously put a razor-sharp edge on it using a Arkansas Whetstone back in UB) he carefully whittles a very serviceable spatula. Nergui is tickled pink with her new implement, which she quickly utilizes to cook up a big patch of tsuvin, or fried noodles with beef and vegetables.

Batmönkh concentrates on carving a new spatula

Batmönkh understandably proud of his new spatula. I now use it in the kitchen of my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi.

Nergui making gambir—fried flat breads

Batmönkh and Yooton in the hunters’ shelter. I claimed it for the night.

Nergui emerging from her tent after a night of sound sleep

The next morning the peaks at the head of the valley are shrouded in gray clouds and mist and rain seems imminent. Batmönkh says we must hurry as it will probably snow on the pass and it could get real nasty by late afternoon.

Universe | H. P. Lovecraft

I have been spending my evenings dipping into the new Library of America edition of H. P. Lovecraft: Tales.  Here is the inimitable Lovecraft on New York City:

“a tangle of material and spiritual putrescence from which the blasphemies of a hundred dialects assail the sky . . . I saw the squint-eyed people of that city, robed horribly in orange and red, and dancing insanely to the pounding of fevered kettle-drums, and the clatter of obscene crotala, and the maniacal moaning of muted horns whose ceaseless dirges rose and fell undulantly like the waves of an unhallowed ocean of bitumen.”

I am willing to bet you do not know what a “crotala" is. I had to go the 20-plus volume Oxford Unabridged Dictionary to find out. A “crotale” is “A type of castanet used mainly in Latin-American music.” And far be it from me to quibble with Lovecraft, but the plural of crotale would appear to be crotalum, and not crotala, as he has it. But why, I must ask, is a crotale “obscene”? And how about that “unhallowed ocean of bitumen”? A ocean of bitumen is scary enough, but an “unhallowed” ocean of bitumen? That is really, really frightening. 

Of course it was just not New York that Lovecraft could not stomach:

"I hated the mocking moon, the hypocritical plain, the festering mountain . . . Everything seemed to me tainted with a loathsome contagion, and inspired by a noxious alliance with distorted hidden powers."

My feelings exactly. In particular the hypocritical plain, just pretending to be flat and even, has always annoyed me. And in fact, it was not just the Earth that Lovecraft was revolted by. He also loathed:

“unknown spheres and powers . . . the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.”

I had hoped that this new edition would shed some light on that much-reviled occult text the Necronomicon, which Lovecraft used as source material, but it now appears its author, the unspeakably vile Abdul Alhazred, was devoured by a flesh-eating demon in broad daylight in the copper-ware market of Damascus and is thus no longer available for interviews. I might add that Abdul Alhazred was not, repeat not, a follower of the Greek neoplatonist philosopher Proclus (410 - 485 A.D.), despite what some woefully misinformed people may have claimed. For a thorough demolition of this absurd assertion see Fragments of the Lost Writings of Proclus.