Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Eej Khairkhan Uul

On the road to Eej Khairkhan Uul. The twin peaks of the mountain are just visible in the distance.

Shelter at Eej Khairkhan Uul

Near the shelter at the base of Eej Khairkhan Uul is a small fire ring and someone has left behind a small pile of twisted and gnarled saxual wood. At least we will have the luxury of a campfire. A pot of tea is set to boil and we sprawl out on a conveniently flat outcrop of rock for a picnic lunch. “The mountain likes you,” my jeep driver Chültem tells me, “the weather was good coming across the desert and now it is perfectly calm and clear. It’s a good sign. I believe we will have an enjoyable time here.” He allows that to his mind Eej Khairkhan is the most special place in all of Gov-Altai Aimag.

View of Eej Khairkhan Uul

He goes on to explain that Eej means “mother” and Khairkhan is an honorific or term of endearment meaning roughly “dear” or “dearest”. Thus Eej Khairkhan could be translated as “Mother Dearest”. When I asked Chültem why it was called this he simply indicated the mountain with a broad sweep of his arm. Realizing that I didn’t grasp his point, he cupped his hand under his breasts as if describing the fulsome bosom of a female acquaintance. Obviously the name referred to the prominent twin peaks of the massif. From far out in the desert the resemblance would have been even more striking to lonely herders or caravan men contemplating the otherwise featureless horizon.

Mammary-like peaks of Eej Khairkhan Uul. The lower mound, front-center, may represent the mons veneris.

But while Eej Khairkhan may have been a dear mother she was a less than perfect wife. According to legend, Chültem relates, Eej Khairkhan was once married to Aj Bogd Uul, a massif crowned by a 12, 432' peak about forty-five miles to the west. But Aj Bogd Uul was old, with white hair—the summit is covered with snow year-round—and Eej Khairkhan lusted for a younger mate. Her attention was drawn to 12,311' Burkhan Buudai Uul ninety miles to the northeast who, from a distance at least, appeared younger. One night she creep away from the sleeping Aj Bodg Uul. About halfway to Burkhan Buudai Uul she crouched down, perhaps to relieve herself, with the hem of her deel resting on the ground. Aj Bodg Uul woke up and in his anger at finding his wife gone threw a huge handful of sand in the direction of Eej Khairkhan. The sand landed on the hem of her deel and prevented her from getting up. To this day she sits stranded, surrounded by sand, halfway between the scorned Aj Bogd Uul and the longed-for Burkhan Buudai Uul.

Eej Khairkhan Uul was also famous for the ascetic hermit-lama who lived here about a hundred years ago. This man, whose name Chültem can’t remember, was from Tsogt, the village just south of Burkhan Buudai Uul which we had passed through the evening before. He joined a monastery, since destroyed, in Tsogt and later made a long pilgrimage to Lhasa, in Tibet, where he had studied under various Tibetan teachers. Eventually returning to the monastery at Tsogt, he found that he was never able to fully concentrate on the religious texts which he was studying nor was he able to devote sufficient time to his meditations. He left the monastery and began a long peregrination among the mountains and deserts of southwest Mongolia. Eventually he was attracted to the austure, uninhabited massif of Eej Khairkhan. Near the base of the mountain he found a cave which he turned into a hermitage. At last he was able to concentrate on his studies and mediations, and for several decades he remained sequestered here, ekking out the barest of livings from the harsh surroundings. Eventually though word of this holy recluse at Eej Khairkhan spread and more and more people came to pay their respects. By the time he died Eej Khairkhan had became a well-known pilgrimage site. Even today many Mongolians come to see the cave where the lama spent most of his life.

Cave-Shelter of the Eej Khairkhan Uul Lama

We also viewed the famous Seven Pools where snowmelt and rain cascade down the side of the mountains into a series of seven natural rock cisterns.

The Seven PoolsAnother view of the Seven Pools
The rare zamba gurvel (lizard) is an habitué of Eej Khairkhan Uul