Our city tour of Ulaanbaator began around 8:30 am when Flower, our Mongolian guide picked us up in the grey van. She was as lovely as her name! We drove out of UB to the south of the city. First stop was the Zaisan Memorial. This is a stunning memorial built by the Russians on the top of a hill to commemorate unknown soldiers and other heros from various wars. There is a tall, thin, statue to the side of which is a circle of paintings depicting various stones of Russian soldiers surrounding a pedestal in the middle, probably built for a flame. The views of the city are marvellous as you look down on ger homes, apartment buildings, schools, and the River Tuul. On the way down the hill from the memorial we stopped at the huge statue of Buddha, turned the prayer bells, and made three times around the statue for luck.
Ulaanbaatar is an eclectic mixture of buildings. As I said previously, it is not over all an attractive city but there are many attractive parts about it. The buildings are a mix of old and new; good condition and bad condition; and a variety of styles that would keep an architecture buff busy for days. There are soviet style high-rises and western style houses with pink, blue, and peach rooves; white gers with colourful patterns on the rooves; modern glass buildings and old-style historical buildings. Restaurants serve a variety of foods including Korean, Mongolian (of course) and Europpean, and there are bars galore including at least one or two Irish bars. The people are stylish and friendly but crossing the ceaselessly busy roads is a nightmare as drivers seem to aim straight for you and our guide assures us, will hit us if we don't move out the way. The language is closer to Turkish than anything else and is soft and whispery to listen to.
We drove back into town, along Peace Avenue (the main road) to the centre of the city at Sukhbaatar Square, named after the hero of the 1921 revolution which resulted in Mongolia becoming communist. A statue of Damdin Sukhbaatar on horseback stands in the middle of the square. At the north end of the square is an enormous bronze statue of Chinggis Khan and his son and grandson, as well as the Parliament building. Other beautiful buildings around the square include the City Hall, a hotel, the post office, a bank, and on the east side, the National Modern Art Gallery.
We walked across the square to The National Museum of Mongolia. The museum contains ten halls with displays from the ancient history of Mongolia, to traditional clothing, jewellery, and culture to socialist Mongolia and finishes in the 10th Hall with a current day display on democratic Mongolia. It was an excellent and well arranged introduction to Mongolia, with everything in English as well as Mongolian (see www.nationalmuseum.mn).
Our next stop was the Gandantegehenling Monastery. The Monastery was built in 1838 and is the home of the spirtual head of Mongolia. Over the years the Monastery grew to include several
dastans, a library, and over 5000 monks. During the communist era (1921 - 1990), the communists suppressed religion. They killed or jailed the monks or forced them into the army. They destroyed five temples in the Monastery, and Russian officials used the remaining temples as accommodation or barns for their horses. The large statue of a golden Buddha was removed and taken to Russia to be melted down. It was only replaced in 1996. In 1990, after Mongolia went through the Democratic Revolution, Buddhism has once again flourished.
The Monastery now only has about 800 monks. It is quite small and not in as good repair as some of the others we have seen, but it was still lovely to see the beautiful statues, artwork, and chanting of the monks. Our city tour was then over and we returned to the hotel to pick up Chris and head out to the Guru Ger Camp in Tereij National Park via the supermarket for snacks. The drive was busy, bumpy, and exciting. We arrived around 3 pm and had some lunch, after which Ray and I went for a walk around the area. It is absolutely fabulous scenery. I had no idea Mongolia was this beautiful. The ger camp is nestled at the base of a rock formation and overlooks a taiga valley and the hills and rocks surrounding the valley. The grasslands are like velvet and it truly is stunning, peaceful, and beautiful.
We ate dinner around 8 and because it was Flower's 20th birthday, Chris had bought a cake and bottle of wine to celebrate it with. After that we watched a Mongolian documentary "The Weeping Camel" which was the story of a camel in a ger community who abandoned her baby because it was "white" but then after some months came back to feed it.....then bed. A really busy but extremely interesting day.
2 comments:
I notice that the museum has the Uighur state murals in the collection. The Uighurs have been politically active recently, with much disturbance. You may not have heard.
Yes, last we heard there had been over a hundred deaths. Haven't heard anything since leaving China so not sure what current position is.
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