The Peace Correspondent (19 page)

Inside, a persistent self-appointed guide pesters me, “Dalai Lama pitch kutchi kutchi” (give me a Dalai Lama picture, please). In most Tibetan monasteries, camera-conscious lamas, like vultures in red cloaks, ask for up 40 yuan to photograph their temples. The men renovating this fort, doing hard labor with pick and shovel, earn six yuan a day.

Two backpackers coming down from the fort say that the workers locked them in earlier until they gave them pictures of the Dalai Lama. According to the none-too-reliable Tsering, the Dalai Lama pictures sold in the marketplace don't count, as they are Chinese imitations.

It is a steep, hard climb up to the run-down fort, now reduced to rubble. Along the battlements, it is so windy and dusty, it feels like we are being blown away. When Robert Byron arrived in the early 1930s, he found people living here. Now the thousands of rooms are all in a shambles.

Some rooms are papered with sheets of blackened paper with scribbling on them, probably prayers in Sanskrit. Others have painted Buddha images, historical murals or thousands of little clay Buddhas all in a row before an altar. A worker shows us a room with three Buddha statues that seem in good repair. In other rooms, rows of sacred writing have been gouged out, victims of the Cultural Revolution.

Finally, working our way up through the three-dimensional maze, we reach the roof. Leaving Tsering panting and smoking a cigarette, I climb up a series of rickety ladders, higher and higher, to the last little place, like a pigeon coop on the top. I stand there awhile, alone, looking out at the great view of the town and the valley below, and try to imagine how the Tibetans felt as the British approached. I can see down the valley where Francis Younghusband and his troops marched up from Sikkim. The troops could have turned right, toward Lhasa, and missed the fort, with its ineffectual cannons, but they couldn't leave it in the hands of the Tibetans.

The surrender of the jong was to have a crushing effect on Tibetan morale. An ancient superstition said that if the great fortress ever fell into the hands of an invader, further resistance would be pointless. In fact, the whole expedition proved largely pointless. After the signing of a token treaty, the Anglo-Tibetan Convention, the army departed just seven weeks after entering Lhasa. And for 80 years, the city once more became off-limits to
foreigners.

But all that was still in the future, as the armies struggled over this now-deserted bastion. From here, Younghusband's invading army marched on to Lhasa. And I, more comfortably, ride back in the jeep.

GENGHIS Khan died falling off his horse. The greatest cavalry general in history, my boyhood hero, perished like a dude ranch drugstore cowboy.

The shattering disclosure of the exalted general's death in 1227 comes to me from a young Mongolian woman, as we stand out on the ocean-like plains just outside Karakorum, his ancient capital. In the 13th century, the Khan and his cavalry rode their shaggy ponies out of the windswept North Asian steppes, all the way west to Europe and south to China, creating the vast, but short-lived, Mongol empire.

Now, in the late 20th century, it is difficult to reach the great warrior's former capital, now just a few crumbled piles of stone. It is worth the effort. Mongol Airlines (MIAT) flies from Beijing to Ulan Bator, the capital, but it seems more appropriate to ride the iron horse to the great Khan's homeland.

Beijing is the start of one branch of the legendary Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow. Early on departure morning at the station platform, roadwise backpackers and hordes of returning Mongols descend on food carts to stock up on quarts of beer,
water, juice, bread and other supplies for the long trek north. Occasionally, dull explosions of full beer bottles dropping from boxes to shatter on the concrete platform punctuate the morning hubbub.

This is no luxury Orient Express, but a serious form of transportation. As the train edges out of the Chinese capital and gains speed, rattling past the grim suburbs, the Mongols dress down for comfort, changing into track suits and shorts, and start drinking breakfast. Before they have downed their first beer, the train is rolling through green hills, past the Great Wall, immense stone ramparts built to keep the ancestors of these modern Mongols' out of the Middle Kingdom. In places, the ancient fortifications snake almost down to the tracks.

Green grass gives way to brown, then to sand sprouting a few scrubby trees as the train chugs across Inner Mongolia and into the Gobi Desert. Already, there is a sense of the great northern void, of entering a wild and unknown frontier. Throughout the long, hot day, empty beer bottles flung through the open windows shatter on the rocky ground with sharp tinkles.

By next morning, we are deep in the vast, unpopulated Mongolian steppes, the feeling of space almost intimidating, especially to travelers from Asia's crowded southern cities. Late afternoon of the second day, we wind around low, grassy hills and into Ulan Bator's outskirts of semipermanent gers (or yurts), traditional dome-shaped tents laid out in compounds enclosed by wooden snow fences.

With the arrival of the Trans-Siberian, the little Ulan Bator station bustles with excitement and activity, more like an isolated village stop than an international terminus. Ancient trucks and battered buses pick up locals, while tourists depart in minivans and private cars operating as taxis.

Ulan Bator (also known as Ulaanbaatar) is no Paris of the plains. The broad boulevards and concrete block architecture of Mongolia's only city, home to a quarter of the nation's population, preserve the grimness of Soviet years. Boxy, forbidding grey
stone or cement government buildings line the central Sukhbaatar Square (twice the size of Red Square, with the same overwhelming gracelessness).

While most of the accommodation is quite basic, the city now has a number of three and four-star hotels. The best are the Genghis Khan, Ulaanbaatar, Bayangol and the Edelweiss.

Still, some architectural treasures in a style generously dubbed “St. Petersburg” grace the capital, especially some classical public buildings and museums.

And country folk in for a brief visit brighten up the drab capital. In the square, young city slickers with ancient cameras photograph rustics outfitted in dels, the traditional long Mongolian coat split along the side like cheong-sams to allow horseback riding. Men pose before the equestrian statue of Sukhbaatar (the national liberator), their children with giant stuffed bears and camels. These stiffly posed souvenir photos will later decorate yurts all across the steppes.

The country comes right into this city, where cows graze on the parliament lawn and a Mongolian cowboy galloping by on a hairy horse nearly bowls me over outside the External Affairs office. As I jump back, I feel an unpleasantly organic squishing underfoot. Cow pies and road apples (horse droppings), not speeding cars, are pedestrian traffic hazards in the Mongolian capital.

Ulan Bator's sights display a strange melange of many outside influences. The Summer Palace is Chinese, with Indian and Tibetan influences, a Pan-Asian assembly with elaborate rooflines, a multitude of Buddhas, intricate ornamentation, vivid colors and profuse gold embellishment. The small, plain wood Winter Palace, several stories high with the characteristic peaked roof of snowy countries, seems Sino-Siberian.

The Gandan Lamasery, once home to 100,000 monks, is Tibet North. In the 1930s, Communist zealots destroyed thousands of Buddhist monasteries across Mongolia. In recent years, these holy places have reopened to eager congregations, so once again praying worshippers prostrate on reclining boards and red-robed
lamas in heavy boots, Seven Dwarfs hats and coats with extra-long sleeves chant to a background of clashing cymbals and blaring trumpets.

The entertaining, but unusual, cultural presentation at the State Drama Theater shows both Chinese and Russian Cossack influences. Especially phenomenal is the costumed man in brightly rouged face doing throat singing, a bizarre chanting, making a sound like a Jew's harp deep in his throat that sounds as though it is rolling down from the dark, lonely hills.

The local diet, however, is pure Mongolian, based on red meat and “white food,” such as mare's milk, koumiss, hard cheeses and dried curds. Restaurant meals consist of greasy mutton, chicken or beef with rice, potatoes and cabbage, and few fresh vegetables.

Mongolians reason that things that grow in the ground are meant for animals to eat. A local woman sharing my table one evening complains of traveling to the United States, where they fed her vegetables and salads. “What do they think I am, a goat?” she demands. Yet these red-meat-and-cholesterol-fed Mongolians are in more robust good health than most pallid tofu-and-bean-sprout vegetarians.

Through the pure good fortune of being in Ulan Bator in mid-July during Naadam, the Mongolian Olympics of “Three Manly Games” (archery, horse racing and wrestling), I see these rugged people in action. On the first day, all the might of the Mongolian military parades in the massive square for the opening ceremonies. Alongside modern cavalry, troops of mounted soldiers in ancient Mongol uniforms of furry hats and dome helmets, carrying bows and quivers of arrows, ride their shaggy little ponies in formation down the main street. It is easy to imagine these fierce soldiers riding out of the hills, standing high in their stirrups to shoot their whistling arrows, terrifying peasants all across Europe.

In these Manly Games, women compete in archery and the jockeys are boys and girls from six to 12 years old. Only wrestling
is all male, fought by combatants wearing strange jackets that cover the backs and shoulders and leave chests bare - for a reason that would delight modern feminists. Long ago, legend has it, a mystery wrestler easily defeated all other contenders. But when they found out it was a woman, they vowed it would never happen again -- and that is why Mongolian traditional wrestlers wear the abbreviated, vest-like jacket.

In the fields outside town, locals set up the most basic of bars: crates of Mongolian beer sold off the back of battered farm trucks. Mounted horsemen crowd around, standing high on their stirrups to exchange tattered tugriks (the local currency) for crates of beer, which they balance on the saddle as they ride off.

The real Mongolia of nomadic herdsmen is found on the rolling grasslands just outside the capital. To visit the ancient capital, I join a tour group on a hard-sprung, Russian-built bus for the bone-jarring, 12-hour, 420-kilometer ride southwest to Hujirt, just an hour's flight from Ulan Bator. Soon after leaving the city, the road ends and Mongolia truly starts. Here is space to match the North American Prairies, the South American pampas, the African veldt.

This is the Mongolia of my fantasies, the wide open, Big Sky, Marlborough Man country of Asia. All day we bounce in Russian buses over rough roads across scenic open country that stretches to the heavens, with only a few white yurts sprouting like wild mushrooms on the hills.

Late in the afternoon, we stop at a nomad camp, where colts and goats and robust healthy children with rosy apple cheeks frisk among the domed felt tents. Invited inside a ger, we experience Mongolian hospitality in the form of chewy chunks of cheese as hard as nougat and great bowls of koumiss (fermented mare's milk). The foul beverage, like vinegary milk, is perhaps palatable to those who like buttermilk or smelly bean curd, but is not for sensitive city stomachs. However, it is impolite to decline the hospitality, so we choke down a few sips.

Outside, cowboys mounted on horses with distinctive, high
saddles, snare milking mares with lassos on the end of long poles while teens hang around on their little ponies as natural as big city boys on bicycles or skateboards.

Back on the rocky road we bounce on, the long Mongolian night falls and the rolling hills turn the dark green of the horsemen's velour robes. Finally, after midnight, we reach Hujirt -- just a 50-minute flight from our starting point.

Set up for tourists, Hujirt is a camp of rows of yurts, like a Mongolian trailer park. After the long ride, the tents are surprisingly comfortable, pleasantly scented with wood smoke from the heavy iron stove in the center and with wide bench beds along the side that we collapse into with groans of appreciation.