Mongolia | Zanabazar | Gandan Monastery

Location: Ulaan Baatar. To the west of city center, off Ikh Toiruu (Big Ring) Road, at the end of Öndör Gegeen Zanabazar Street.

The full name of Gandan Monastery is Gandantegchenling, the exact meaning of which is uncertain, but which might translate into something like “Great Place of Complete Joy” or “Great Way to the Cosmos.” The monastery was founded in 1809 by the 4th Bogd Gegeen, one of Zanabazar’s Successors, as a center for Tsanid, or advance studies in Buddhist philosophy and practice. According to A. M. Podzneev, the more advanced of the lamas at Ikh Khuree, centered at that time around current-day Sukhebaatar Square in downtown Ulaan Baatar, asked the 4th Bogd Gegeen to create a separate monastery for them:

. . . as soon as Urga began to emerge as a governmental and trading center, life at the Khuree began to oppress the learned lamas, and they planned a way to separate themselves from it. Their requests concerning this matter began as early as the times of the third gegen, though it was the fourth gegen who first heeded their wishes and in 1809 established Gandan on the spot where it stands today.

The first temple built at Gandan was known as the Shar Süm, or Yellow Temple, and in 1824 the Lamrim Temple was completed. After the return of the 5th Bogd Gegeen in 1836 from a visit to Tibet he moved his residence to Gandan and several more temples were constructed, including the main Gandantegchenling Temple in 1838 and the Vajradhara Temple in 1840-41. (Some sources cite the completion of Gandantegchenling Temple in 1838 as the beginning of Gandan.) According to Podzneev, Gandan grew rapidly in size at this time:

When . . . the Gegen’s palace was founded at the Gandan, the majority of the lamas began requesting to be enrolled in the Tsanid school in order that they might be closer to the Gegen, and the Gegen enrolled each of them, for this reason the Tsanid schools, they say, were never as full in Urga as they were at the time of the fifth Gegen

The 5th Bogd Gegeen died in 1842, at the age of twenty-seven, and was entombed at Gandan. His short-lived successor, the 6th Bogd Gegeen (1842–1849) also lived at Gandan before succumbing to small pox while still a young boy. The early deaths of these two Bogd Gegens while living at Gandan led subsequent Bogd Gegens to believe that the monastery was not a propitious residence and as a result they established living quarters elsewhere. Many monks followed, “leaving Gandan once more as the exclusive residence of the learned lamas,” according to Podzneev. The 7th and 8th Bogd Gegens were entombed at Gandan, however.

Gandan escaped the wholesale destruction suffered by most monasteries during the communist suppression of Buddhism. Some temples and stupas were destroyed or damaged, but at least six temples and the surrounding wall survived more or least in tact. The monastery itself was shut down during the height of the repressions in 1938. Religious services were reinstituted in 1944, and Gandan became a kind of showcase on display to foreign dignitaries and other visitors as proof that Buddhism had not been completely snuffed out in Mongolia.

Today Gandan is once again very active, with reportedly over 400 monks in residence. The monastery hosts a college of Medicine and Astrology and four other colleges of Buddhist philosophy and tantric practices. Gandan is also home to Zanabazar Buddhist University, founded in 1970. Specializing in Buddhist and Indo-Tibetan studies, the university attracts students and researchers from all over Mongolia and the rest of the world.

As for Zanabazar’s artworks, one of his most famous creations, the Vajradhara crafted in 1683 at his Tövkhon retreat (see above), can be seen in the Vajradhara Temple, located in a separate walled compound to the left of the main entrance to the monastery. This is the original Vajradhara Temple constructed in 1840 but subsequently remodeled.

Vajradhara Temple (Left)

Gandantegchenling Temple, dating from 1838 and located in the same compound, contains what is said to be a self-portrait of Zanabazar made at the request of his mother, although as with other of Zanabazar’s “self portraits” there is some question as to who actually made it.

Also of interest, although not directly connected to Zanabazar, is the huge Tibetan-style Megjid Janraisig Temple towards the back of the main compound, built in 1912 to house an eighty-two foot-high statue of Janraisig (Avalokitesvara). The original statue was destroyed by the communists and the metal used, at least according to anecdotal history, to make bullets. A campaign to build a replacement statue was launched in the mid-1990s under the direction of now-president of Mongolia Enkhbayar, and a new eighty-seven foot high Janraisig statue was installed in the temple in 1996. The temple now attracts hundreds if not thousands of devout pilgrims and sightseers a day and is one of the main tourist attractions in Ulaan Baatar.

Janraisig Temple

Just to the right of the Janraisig Temple is the Kalachakra Temple, also known as the Dechengalpa Datsan. Although Zanabazar was not known for his interest in the Kalachakra (Mongolian = Duinkhor) doctrine, his previous incarnation, Taranatha, wrote extensively on the subject and translated a guidebook to the kingdom to Shambhala, whose kings first propagated the Kalachakra doctrine, from Sanskrit into Tibetan. He even claimed to have visited Shambhala in a dream state (unlike other visitors to this realm, he found it inhabited almost completely by women). The Kalachakra Temple was founded by the 4th Bogd Gegeen in 1806 for the study of the Kalachakra teachings, and in 1807 Kalachakra rituals were held in the datsan for the first time. Originally the datsan was located in Ikh Khuree, in the general area of present-day Sukhebaatar Square. It was reestablished here at Gandan in 1992, and Kalachakra rituals are now held in the temple on a regular basis. The current temple contains seven extremely rare thangkas depicting the 722 Kalachakra Deities, and other thangkas depicting thirty-one of the thirty-two Kings of Shambhala (one was reportedly stolen), as well as Shambhala itself. Incidentally, the 14th Dalai Lama will be giving a Kalachakra Initiation in Amaravati, India, from January 5 to January 16, 2006.

Mongolia | Khovd Aimag | Yamaan Us Rock Engravings

The Yamaan Us, or Goat Water Rock Drawings, are located in a narrow gorge 14.7 miles east of Uyench at N46º01.392 / E092º20.049. There are several hundred drawings here on the face of a smooth-sided cliff. Most of the drawings are believed to date from the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age.


Cliffs with drawings
Examples of drawings
Closer view of the unusual drawing of a cart drawn by three horses
Drawings of ibex
Drawing of a deer

The rock drawing of the cart at Yamaan Us has become well-known and is often reproduced; here, for example, on the wall of the Buyant Restaurant (not rated by Michelin) in Khovd's Buyant Hotel.

Mongolia | Zanabazar | Winter Palace Museum

The Winter Palace

See Bogd Khan's Winter Palace Museum for more information on Zanabazar.

Mongolia | Khovd Aimag | Guardian Ovoo

On the way from Uyench to Bulgan we stopped at the famous Guardian Ovoo, reportedly built by the Oirats in the far distant past (I am still trying to track down details of this).

The Guardian Ovoo, a major landmark in southern Khovd Aimag

Closer view of the Guardian Ovoo

View from the Guardian Ovoo

View from the Guardian Ovoo

Mongolia | Khovd Aimag | Bayanzurkh-Bulgan

After tea, fried bread, and yoghurt made from yaks’s milk with our hosts we set out to visit the Bayanzurkh Deer Stone and grave complex about half a mile away. The deer stones date from the late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. Their exact significance is a matter of some dispute.

Deer Stones

According to a professor of history at Khovd College who I had spoken to on my previous visit to Khovd, the circle at the top of most deer stones may represent the sun, and the line of small circles the planets moving throught the sky. This is just one of several interpretations, however.

Detail of Deer Stone

In addition to the deer stones there are also a dozen or more graves, most probably dating from the Turk Era in the sixth and seventh centuries. The grave mounds are surrounded by either a circle of stones or a rectangle of stones with larger stones at each of the four corners.

Grave Mound

Baga Ulaan Davaa (Little Red Pass), which we had crossed the night before, is the main pass through the Mongol-Altai Range in Khovd Aimag. From Bayanzurkh there are two ways south to the town of Bulgan, near which we are supposed to met our camel men. One is straight south down the valley of the Bodonch River, which begins near Bayanzurkh and flows by the settlement. The other road veers to the west at Bayanzurkh and then crosses Ikh Ulaan Davaa (Big Red Pass) before turning south. Tseveenjav explains that most commercial traffic goes the Bodonch River route, but that the Ikh Ulaan Davaa route is most scenic. Also, he suspects that it will also soon be closed by snow. So he suggests he go to Bulgan via the latter road and come back via the Bodonch River.

Ikh Ulaan Davaa

Ikh Ulaan Davaa, at 9715 feet, is 6.5 mile west of Bayanzurkh. From here can be seen a sweeping view of the crest of the Mongol-Altai Range, the highest point of which is 14,311-foot Monkh Khairkhan Uul, the second highest mountain in Mongolia, after 14,350 Khuiten Uul in Bayan-Olgii Aimag, both of which I visited on previous trips to western Mongolia. (Oddly enough, I encountered famous European mountaineer Reinhold Messner at the base Monkh Khairkhan. He was apparently looking for almas, the Mongolian version of Big Foot.)

Crest of the Mongol-Altai Range

Khuiten Uul in Bayan-Olgii Aimag

Monkh Khairkhan Uul

From cold and windy Ikh Ulaan Davaa the road drops down to the headwaters of the Uyench River, which starts near the crest of the Mongol-Altai Range and eventually disappears into the gravel of the Zungarian Gobi near the area where we are headed by camel. From the headwaters the river descends into a gorge which eventually narrows out into a narrow valley. In contrast to the desiccated hills and mountains on either side the valley is one long oasis of grassy meadows and groves of cottonwood trees and thickets of willow and alders. At a spring called Ulaan Eregiin Rashaan we stop and built a fire for tea and lunch. Tseveenjav relates that the surrounding hills are full of ibexes, and that he often brings foreign hunters to camps here. He comments on how morose the hunters get when they are unable to bag an ibex and how elated they become if and when they finally shoot one, often hugging their Mongolian hunting guides. Why grown men should hug each other after killing an animal is unclear to me, but Tseveenjav allows that hard-core hunters are a strange breed. He also said that he personally has seen snow leopards in this area and that they are not as rare as a lot of people seem to think.

The valley of the Uyench River

Ulaan Eregiin Rashaan

Near the sum center of Uyench the mountains drop away and the valley opens into a wide expanse of desert steppe. A hydroelectric program under the direction of the Chinese is in progress, using the water from the Uyench River. When complete the plant will provide electricity for Uyench, Bulgan, and Altai sums. In the town of Uyench we have to stop at the Khovd Aimag Border Police Headquarters and get our border permits, which I had acquired from the headquarters in Ulaan Baatar, checked and signed by the local commander. We are informed that we will also have to sign in with each the border stations we pass along the way on our camel trip. This takes two hours. Finally we proceed on Bulgan.

Mongolia | Khovd Aimag | Khovd-Bayanzurkh

Having already made three trips to the central Gobi Desert—two camel trips in Bayankhongor Province (one on the Route of the 13th Dalai Lama) and a jeep trip through western Omnigov Province—I decided to do a camel trip in the so-called Zungarian Gobi in the western province of Khovd. I contacted Dr Terbish, a professor of biology at the National University of Mongolia who in addition to being an contributor to the Mongolian Red Book (a compendium of rare and endangered species), the author of several of his own books, and a panjandrum with Great Genghis Expeditions, is arguably the world’s leading authority on the zamba guvel, a rare lizard found only at select locations in the Gobi Desert, and he agreed to organize the trip through local contacts he had made while doing research in the Zungarian Gobi.

Thus on September 28, with a translator named Mash-Erdene (“Very Glorious”) in tow I boarded a AeroMongolia Fokker 50 for the 708 mile flight to Khovd City, capital of Khovd Aimag. This was the first time I had flown with AeroMongolia, a relatively new-comer in the airline business, and I found the new 50 seat prop plane a welcome change from the old chicken-crates-on-wings Russian planes previously used by MIAT Mongolian Airlines. Also, the weather was perfect; not so much as a bump in the entire two and a half hour flight. On the plane were ten or twelve people from other countries most of whom seemed to be on their way to Bayan-Olgii province further out west, where they were planning on visiting an exhibition of hunting eagles held by the local Kazakh people. As one man from Spain explained to me, all available flights to Olgii, the capital of Bayan-Olgii, were packed full, so he and his friends were flying to Khovd and hoped to continue on to Olgii by chartered jeep.

We were met at the airport by our jeep driver, a extremely well preserved 73 year-old man named Tseveenjav.

Tseveenjav

We barreled into Khovd City in his sixteen year old Russian jeep and made a quick stop at the big city market for some last minute shopping.

Main Street of Khovd

Khovd is famous for its vegetables and melons, and we were able to get carrots, cabbage, and potatoes for the ridiculously low price of 100 togrogs (about 8 cents) a kilo. At the market we met a woman in her forties who worked as a cook at a hunting camp in the Mongol-Altai Mountains and she asked if she could hitch a ride with us to Bayanzurkh, a small settlement in the mountains on the way to the town of Bulgan, our final destination. We had originally planned to camp out somewhere near Bayanzurkh so we agreed to take her along.

Another view of Khovd

We drove west from Khovd, then south, eventually crossing the crest of the Mongol-Altai Range at 9416 foot Baga Ulaan Davaa (Small Red Pass).

Ovoo at Baga Ulaan Davaa

Here our driver stopped and we circumambulated the ovoo at the pass while Tseveenjav made an offering of artz, incense made from the leaves of a kind of juniper plant common to Mongolia.

View of the Mongol-Altai Range from Baga Ulaan Davaa

By the time we arrived at Bayanzurkh, a tiny settlement of two or three buildings and half a dozen or so gers it was pitch dark; it was almost a new moon and even the sliver of moon was not to rise until after midnight. The woman we had given a ride to wanted to be left off at a ger here. Stepping out of the jeep we were confronted by gelid temperatures of 15 degrees F. and a relentless twenty-mile an hour wind. The thought of sending up tents and attempting to cook a meal under such conditions was daunting at best. We ducked into the ger for tea and the woman soon arranged with her friends for us to stay in their ger for the night and she herself agreed to cook us a meal on their stove. So we threw out our sleeping bags on the floor of the warm ger and settled in for the night.

China | Gansu Province | Labrang Photos

See more Photos of Labrang Monastery

China | Beijing | Anige's White Pagoda

Back in the Big Dumpling I headed for the Maio Ying Temple and White Pagoda located in the western part of the city. The White Pagoda was built during the Yuan Dynasty, construction beginning in 1271 and ending in 1279. It was designed by the Nepalese artist Anige, who is thought to have had an influence on the artwork of Zanabazar, First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia. A huge monastery, one of the big projects Khubilai Khan initiated to mark his creation of the Yuan Dynasty, formally named in 1272, was built in front of the pagoda. This monastery was destroyed by fire near the end of the Yuan Dynasty (1368). In the first year of the Ming Dynasty the monastery was rebuilt and given the name Miao Ying Temple.


The Maio Ying Temple with the White Pagoda behind
The pagoda itself is 167 feet high. There are some indications that the stupa also commemorates a Kalachakra Initiation given to Khubilai and members of his court, but I am still trying to track down the details of this.


The White Pagoda
As mentioned Anige was from Nepal. He and twenty-four of his fellow Nepalese-Newari artists had been invited to the court of Khubilai by the Tibetan lama Phagspa, who had been appointed the “Imperial Preceptor,” or head of Buddhism, under Khubilai. Here Anige and his followers introduced to the Mongols a new Nepalese-inspired style of Tibetan Buddhist art. “The earliest Tibetan pantheon known to the Mongols, notes one art historian, ”was that of the Newari school, expressed in the artistic idiom of the Newari, or Belri style, as it was called in Tibet,” Anige eventually turned in his monk’s robes and became head of the Directorate-General of Artisans for the Mongol court. He himself made a statue of Mahakala for Khubilai and a golden Mahakala for Phagspa. Although quite famous in their time, both these works subsequently disappeared.

Indeed, few of the works of Anige and his school survived until Zanabazar’s time, and there is no direct evidence Zanabazar saw any of them, but art historians have noted the apparent influence of Anige’s aesthetic in the delicate detailing of the necklaces, armbands, bracelets, and other ornaments on Zanabazar’s Own Statues. In any case, the influence of Anige and his school continued on in Tibet up until at least the seventeenth century, when Zanabazar himself visited Lhasa, and the Newari artists he met there and perhaps brought back to Mongolia with him in his entourage would have been familiar with the style of art originally developed by the Newari artist.


The White Pagoda
The Zanabazar-style of stupa, which he may have developed on the model of Anige’s stupas, like the White Stupa in Beijing, are still being made today in Mongolia; for example the One Recently Built in Arkhangai on the site of the so-called Taliyn Khuree or Steppe Monastery

China | Gansu Province | Lanzhou #2

Left Xiahe at 7:30 in the morning for the long six-hour bus ride back to Lanzhou. I no sooner took my seat than the young Chinese woman who had sat next to me on the way here, who ended up in the room next to me at the Tara Guesthouse, and who I had seen several times doing the Khora, came on the bus and took the seat right behind me. She again flashed her 220-watt smile and again we could not communicate. She just sat in her seat quietly fingering her prayer beads. Perhaps she is part of a growing phenomenon: Chinese followers of Tibetan Buddhism.

Back in Lanzhou I quickly checked into a hotel and then headed back to Baita Park for another look at the stupa there. Today is brilliantly sunny, unlike the other day when I was there, when it was very overcast.


The Yellow River at Lanzhou

Foot bridge across the Yellow River. According to some sources this foot bridge is near the old Silk Road ford across the Yellow River used as long as 2000 years ago.


Crossing the Yellow River. The White Stupa is just visible in Baita Park on the horizon.


The 56 foot-high White Stupa supposedly built in memory of Sakya Pandita, and which may or may not be his tomb.

The next day I continued my peregrinations around Lanzhou. First I stopped by the statues of Xuanzang and the other characters from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West located on the banks of the Yellow River. Xuanzang was of course a real person, one of the great travelers of all time, who went on a pilgrimage from Xian in China to India in the seventh century. It is believed that he crossed the Yellow River here at Lanzhou. Later he was immortalized as one of the main characters in the fictionalized Journey to the West. Although I have never consciously attempted to follow Xuanzang’s route I have crossed paths with him many times: at Bodhgaya and Nalanda in India, and at Turpan in Xinjiang.


Sandy and Xuanzang on their way to India

The immortal Pigsy, who gave up a live of dissipation to aid Xuanzang on his journey
Then I continued crosstown to Wuquan Park, passing on the way one of Lanzhou’s numerous mosques serving the large Moslem Hui population here.

Mosque

Temples at Wuquan Park

Sixteen-foot high Buddha dating from the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1272-1368) in the Jingang Temple

Laughing Buddha in one of the courtyards at Wuquan Park

China | Gansu Province | Labrang Photos

Some more photos of Labrang:

The huge 140 pillar main assembly hall

Walkway around the courtyard in front of the main assembly hall

Door of the main assembly hall

The Grand Gold Tile Hall

Another Temple

Labrang, like Kumbum Monastery, is famous for its butter statues. This statue and decorations are made entirely of molded butter dyed different colors.

Another butter statue