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Gobi desert - 1993
Gobi desert - 1993
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-17 16:28:50
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up to me patiently, took me by the elbow and whispered in a soothing, and I suppose he thought convincing, tone of voice: "Look, my dear chap, this is the Popular Republic of Mongolia. Don't do that again. You've got to obey the rules her. It's not Moscow where you can go wherever you like".
Little by little I explored the outskirts of this large provincial town. Yurts were to be found there, surrounded by wooden fences. The air was heavy with the pungent smell of tallow, which sometimes even drifted up to my hotel bedroom.
On a low hillside there lay the remains of an ancient Chinese-Buddhist city: Urga, legends of which were passed by word of mouth through all the countries of Central Asia and even farther afield, to Russia, Tibet, China and Afghanistan. Today only the Buddhist temple of Gandan is still standing. In front of the temple long rows of women were lying prone in prayer. Horns were being blown as a musical accompaniment to the temple rites. The temple's red gates were guarded by gilded dragons. Inside, there was a large crowd of people: many of them were old men and women, but there were also some few youths. The monks, with their shaven heads and brick-red tunics were in the centre of the throng. Two venerable Lamas sat slightly above the crowd on a raised platform.
Only a hundred monks remain in Ulan Bator : before the revolution in 1924 there were 7,000. In pre-revolutionary times there were 120,000 monks in the country as a whole, out of a population of just 540,000 people. There was, in other words, one monk for every two adult citizen. Small wonder, therefore, that the first task of the new political system was that of abolishing this unproductive feudalistic class in order to raise the economic levels of this backward, extremely poor country. Unfortunately, as in all revolutions, moral principales went by the board during the resolution of the problem. " It was a bloody operation, but indispensable
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See photographs from:
Mongolia Gallery
