JOIN USMystical world
Green meadows, vast grassy steppes, clear blue skies and verdant mountains whose benign slopes fissile away chilly winds at sunset leaving one completely overwhelmed by a sense of the divine and mystical.
Not often does one presume that a nomadic way of life could co-exist with globalisation, until Captain M I Singh, piloting Air India’s special aircraft carrying the Indian President Prathiba Patil, made a dexterously splendid landing at the Chinggis Khaan International Airport in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, a tableland of fame and royalty.
Driving into this now-modern city suffused with Russian influences from architecture, rail gauge, script, town-planning to ballet dancing, (history tells us that on November 26, 1911, Mongolians proclaimed their independence from China with the help of Russia), it is an elated romantic feeling to be at the crossroads of a once-mighty Europe and an ancient Asia.
Changing times
Ulaanbaatar is 1,380 m above sea level and is thus one of the highest capitals in the world. As our car rattled along the mountain path, the absorbing whispers were not about horses, sheep or camels for which Mongolia is home, but about its rich array of minerals — coal, copper, iron ore, uranium, gold — that attract dollars now. Mongolia, as a fallout of the spreading perestroika (restructuring) in the erstwhile Soviet Union, had adopted a democratic Constitution in 1992.
The colour and fragrance of a multi-party democracy can now be felt on the streets of Ulaanbaatar. This is notwithstanding an imposing statue of the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, whom they respect, close to the historic Sukhbaatar Square in the heart of the city. Ulaanbaatar itself — meaning ‘red hero’ in the Mongolian language — is named in honour of their desi revolutionary chief Sukhbaatar, who led the citizens’ revolution much earlier in the 1920s with the backing of Russians to become only the second Communist country in the world after Soviet Russia.
The dialectics of a pluralistic democracy and the economy opening up in the last two decades has helped transform Mongolia, which is structurally a small economy with a population of just about 2.70 million (2010 estimate), half of whom live in Ulaanbaatar, and with an over 90 per cent literacy rate. From a socialist set-up, it is now the mountain crest of globalisation, looking to new valleys beyond.
Socially and culturally, this has made a huge difference to Mongolia and its people. Its icons are no longer just pulled out of the former Soviet bloc. Buddhism is back in all its glory as the country’s official religion, even as the new democratic polity resurrects and celebrates the hallowed memories of Chinggis Khaan, the legendary warrior who consolidated all Mongolian nomadic clans into a unified Mongolian state in 1206. Ulaanbaatar has now space for a telling statue of Mahatma Gandhi as well.
India is the deeply felt spiritual other for most Mongolians. For, Buddhism came into this country in three waves, mainly the Mahayana tradition (Northern School) say historians. The first wave came during the 3rd century BC when Mauryan king Ashoka sent missions abroad. The second revival was during the 13th century AD, when the flamboyant Khubilai Khaan (whom poet Coleridge immortalised in his verse), grandson of Chinggis Khaan, had invited a famous lama to promote Buddhism. The third wave of Buddhism that spread in Mongolia was in the 16th century.
Many of the Buddhist monasteries here were either destroyed or made dysfunctional under the Communist regime and freedom of religion returned only in 1990, says Onon, our Mongolian interpreter. Only the Gandan Monastery in the heart of Ulaanbaatar survived that onslaught. This oldest surviving religious abode for practising Buddhists has a unique temple for Buddha, a somber hall brightened by auspicious traditional lamps where monks chant evocatively, besides a spacious courtyard where common folks lovingly feed pigeons all through the day.
Gandan Monastery is still an embodiment of serenity and compassion where time stands still. The mellifluous chanting reverberates with shades of saama vedic recitation in India, even as several motifs and symbols like the trishul, horses, bulls, fish and lions in the public space point to an earlier epoch of cultural interaction between the two ancient civilisations.
Mongolia is dotted with several other monuments invoking worship of mountains and the sky. But their Naadam festival is an aesthetic collage of their cultural strengths and manly games — horse racing, wrestling, archery, deep-throat singing, dancing with masks to convey Buddha’s ideas to ballet. The main festival in mid-July also displays their traditional costumes in a setting ringed by gers, their traditional home for centuries.
More recent is the massive Chinggis Khaan statue complex at Tsongin Boldog, 52 km from Ulaanbaatar, where legend has it that he had lived and discovered a golden whip. The 40-meter-tall statue of Chinggis Khaan on a horseback with a golden whip is said to be the largest horseman’s statue in the world. Nearly 250 tonnes of stainless steel has gone into its making.
At the statue’s circular base is a huge replica of the traditional shoe that Chinggis Khaan had worn in his military campaigns and stitched with 235 pieces of horse skin. An elevator at the statue’s base enables tourists ascend a vantage point from where they can step on to the back neck of the horse and then on to its head. From there, a closer view of the dauntless hero’s face overlooking a panoramic lush mountainous landscape is astounding.
The capital city itself has several other attractions like the new Presidential Palace and the National Museum, not to forget Mongolia’s largest retail state department store established way back in 1924. It offers an amazing variety of products, souvenirs, locally made chocolates and even Tibetan tea. It is a must-visit, though tourists have to exchange US dollars for the local togrog currency at counters.
For the more enterprising venturing into the Mongolian countryside and the Gobi Desert, archaeological and historical challenges abound, from fossilised pieces of wood to even dinosaur bones. “Earth’s entire history can be revealed in a single rock,” says author Jack Weatherford, emphasising that Mongolia is no longer a land frozen in time.