On the Trail of Genghis Khan Page 5
When the milking was finished, everyone crowded into one ger for a dinner of meat and homemade noodles—known as gurultai shul—after which we passed around my photo album from Australia. The elder of the family, who had been so interested in my saddle, tried to ask a series of questions, but our poor Mongolian left us hanging. I was fluent in Russian, but like communism itself, it was a language that had never really held currency among a people who had remained more or less self-reliant through the centuries.
It was dark outside before we knew it. An oil lamp was lit, throwing a glow across to the woman who had been cooking earlier; now she sat with her husband, their little one fast asleep between them. Outside there came the almost inaudible sound of bleating and farting as the sheep, goats, and yaks settled in around the gers, adding to the sensation we were sitting in the nucleus of an extended family.
Although I didn’t quite grasp it yet, much of my journey across the steppe to Hungary would be spent trying to imagine how life might have once been before the Russian Empire and the era of industrialization in Soviet times brought about an effective end to the nomadic way of life. It was also true that even now in Mongolia, the urban population, particularly in Ulaanbaatar, was growing exponentially, and there were whispers of multinational mining giants negotiating agreements to exploit Mongolia’s untold deposits of gold, coal, copper, and uranium.
For most Mongolians in 2004, though, the looming mining boom and its potential impacts still seemed far off and unfathomable, and here, cradled by the ger, there was no thinking backward or forward, only a feeling of completeness, for this was nomadic life intact, virtually unchanged from the days of Genghis Khan eight hundred years before.
3
WOLF TOTEM
From the nomad camp we continued northwest through the Khangai Mountains—a sprawling range that dominates central Mongolia and separates the dry deserts of the south from the Siberian forests. We were cutting through a narrow finger of the Khangai range to reach the gentler plains and river valleys on its northwestern perimeter. As we rode, I found myself absorbed by the unfolding terrain that grew in scale and wildness.
Meandering rivers led us among peaks as bony as the backs of malnourished old horses and past lakes where we watched the mist roll across the glassy water at dawn. The higher peaks were generally sleek, round-edged and emerald green, with dense clusters of forest concealing much of the upper slopes.
Perhaps it had something to do with a confidence newly found during our stay with the nomad family, but a feeling of cadence and routine emerged. Flecks of white on the horizon grew into gers as we rode, filling our day with characters, sound, and color, then melted over our shoulders just as the taste of fermented milk and dried curd faded from our palates. In a world without fences, where communities lifted and moved as unpredictably as the weather, our usual ways of keeping track of time and place were beginning to change. The only reference point for one particularly empty valley was a vulture pecking away at the flesh of a yak carcass under an oppressive sun. An entire day was defined by an incident when herders who borrowed Kathrin’s horse to catch their own runaway mounts left us for hours wondering if, in fact, they had stolen it. A whole afternoon was marked out by one of many storms that came roaring through, breaking the heat and slamming us with a barrage of hail. For an hour we stood, like the horses, tail to the wind, shivering cold, yet within another half hour the black wall had given way to blue, and under the baking sun I was searching the sky for shade-giving clouds.
Ten days after our stay with the nomad family we made a decision to deviate from the main valleys and travel over a wild mountain pass known as Davaa Nuur (Mountain Pass Lake). Although we had begun to camp regularly with nomad families for the protection they offered, the grass around these camps was usually eaten down to dry stubble, and our horses were growing hungry and thin. Just as important, crossing Davaa Nuur would take us up away from the heat and provide a shortcut through the northern fringes of the Khangai Mountains to where the land promised to settle into broader slopes and plains.
Upon hearing about our plan, the family with whom we had camped at the base of the river valley loaded us up with dried curd and yak cheese. As we were on the point of departure, our host, a gruff toothless herder in a torn, threadbare deel that reeked of tobacco and mutton, emerged from the ger shaking his head and repeating, “It’s dangerous up there!” The bowlegged elderly matriarch of the family waddled out carrying a bucket of milk. As we turned and rode away she flicked three ladles to the sky. “Ayan zamdaa sain yavaarai!” she called, wishing us good luck on our journey, as the milk rained down on our backs and the rumps of the horses. In a land where every journey away from home presented the risk of misfortune and even death, this was a ritual that had been preserved from ancient times long before the era of Genghis Khan. White represented luck and purity, and painting the road with this sacrifice of milk asked the gods to favor us with safe travels.
Several hours later, the family ger had contracted to an anonymous speck below, and what had been a wide river valley was a boxed-in ravine at the feet of giant mountain ridges that leaned toward one another. We had long lost any hint of a trail and followed a stream that cascaded down a trench through swamp and loose rock.
It was just coming on to evening as the tall seeding grasses gave way to dense, short alpine varieties cradling delicate colonies of dew and raindrops. Not far above, 3,000 m peaks swam in frothing mist and cloud, revealing a different character each time I lifted my eyes. For one short period the sun bore through to the silvery scree slopes, highlighting orange and yellow lichens. Soon, however, the whole mountain was stained with dark cloud shadow, betraying no pigment at all. Then the clouds boiled over, and again all was lost in a soup of rain and mist. The sheer fragility of calm in this mountain environment brought a welcome clarity absent in hotter climes.
When we crested a final pinch of rock and grass, the source of the stream opened up. Davaa Nuur was a tawny lake nestled between the rocky peaks we had been aiming for all day. By now muscular black storm clouds had cut the sunlight short and banished any sense of romance.
In the morning we woke to waves of rain and hail that drove into the tent with such intense gusts that the tent threatened to tear apart. When it was particularly strong we sat hard up against the fabric feeling the blows from rain and hail pepper our spines. At last the wind abated somewhat and we lay cuddling in the sleeping bag. It was no secret that Kathrin had been looking forward to the sense of privacy to be found out here in the relative wilderness. It had become the norm to wake at the break of dawn greeted by children and adults sitting at the entrance of the tent watching our every move. When we packed up to leave, they would often innocently pull everything out of our boxes and sprawl things about. Men would also gallop in begging to see our saddles. Coping with this attention, as well as managing the horses and everything else, left no room for romance. Our relationship had become a businesslike, working one, not helped by the fact that I could barely manage a weary “good night” before falling asleep each evening.
At around lunchtime, however, it seemed that even here in the wilderness time to ourselves was limited. Just as one of many thunderclouds surged over and the light went dim, two bedraggled men crawled in unannounced. It was a small, two-person tent—cozy at the best of times—but this didn’t seem to concern the men, who unraveled tobacco bundled in old silk sashes, and began smoking.
“Where are you traveling?” they eventually asked.
I explained we were traveling to the Danube, but their eyes glazed over. “Tosontsengel,” I then said, referring to a town on the far side of the pass. In turn, they explained they were searching for 150 missing yaks.
I offered them tea and aaruul. For the next hour or so they sat quietly smoking, flicking through our photos, and talking among themselves.
The rain eased, and the herders left the tent. I seized the opportunity to hike to the peak directly above camp. Perched on a rock t
hat nearly breached the ceiling of cloud, I took in the land we had been riding through. First I cast my eyes over the lake. For a brief time the water was still, but then, brushed by the wind, it all went opaque and gray and an isolated rainstorm drifted across its breadth before smacking into rocky slopes on the far shore. To the north beyond the lake, where we planned to cross the pass tomorrow, mountains and clouds choked off the view, but to the south the horizon was indefinitely far. In places light spilled through patches of blue to the earth far below where flocks of sheep could be seen like fine grains of salt and pepper in a slow avalanche down the valley sides. Across on the opposing mountains patches of forest nestled into sheltered indentations, watched over by pyramids of green. I imagined the many hidden crevices and unhampered woods crawling with wild animals, which warily monitored the life of the humans below, just as I was doing.
The longer I concentrated, the more I became aware of the multitude of gers and the presence of horsemen, particularly on the bottom of the valley slopes. Together with their animals, nomads were carrying out a cycle of symbiotic life as old as the domestication of the sheep and the horse—the animals turned the grass into meat, milk, and dung, providing food, shelter, and heat. In return, the nomads offered their flocks protection from wolves and storms.
Some horsemen, however, like those who had been in our tent, could be seen picking their way up through the wild mountains to summits far from their homes and flocks. At the same time kites were diving down to clean away the tossed-aside remains of carcasses near gers and pick off rodents such as ground squirrels and mice from the grazing areas. Unlike where I had grown up in Australia, where the land was demarcated into national parks, logging zones, farmland, and residential areas, here there was an overwhelming sense that animals and humans coexisted on the margins of survival, each knowing its unique role.
By the time I made my way back down to camp, hail was beating down once more and the view had closed in. I was more than happy to return to a slumber in the tent, where the world was small and snug. The sun faded early behind the dense clouds, and we slept longer than we had since beginning our journey.
Two days later we were still confined to the tent by the weather and I was craving the long horizons of the steppe. With dwindling food supplies and only a sprinkling of diesel left for the stove, there was, in any case, no choice but to give the pass a try or retreat back down the way we had come.
We woke at 5:00 A.M. and by seven o’clock were skirting around the edge of the lake. A hint of sunlight that promised to break through the moody clouds stirred hopes of better weather, but there was no denying we had left summer behind in the valley. My toes turned to ice, and from the bare, wind-lashed slopes the only trees that dared grow were dwarf birch and willow, rising up all disfigured and little higher than ground creepers.
No sooner had I contemplated dismounting to warm up my toes than Bor fell knee deep through a frozen crust into a bog and I was very nearly thrown from the saddle. We dismounted and continued on foot, but time and time again were forced to backtrack from bogs with panicked horses, or became blockaded by fields of jagged rocks reminiscent of an old moraine. When Kathrin’s horse suddenly flew at me with his back legs, hooves clearing my head by a hairsbreadth, we lay back in the bog to take stock. My hands trembled with adrenaline, and my vision blurred from hunger. Kathrin looked defeated. We had only just reached the northern end of the lake, and judging from my map, the pass was another 8 km away, the majority of which remained smothered by mist. Getting up there was beginning to feel beyond us.
As we sipped tea from the thermos, however, we noticed something that rekindled hope. Delicately marked out between two rocks was the unmistakable shape of a hoofprint. Sensing the significance, we leaped to our feet, and only a little farther on found a similar indentation. Then we laid eyes on something that told us all we needed to know: the butt of a cigarette.
Over the next three or four hours there were times when we lost all sign of the horse tracks, but just when we were convinced we had gone astray, they would materialize again. Meanwhile, a picture of this phantom rider grew. He was a gentle man, I decided, probably in his middle years, riding with a gun slung over his shoulder and a cigarette lolling in his mouth. At times he sang, but as he neared the pass he grew quiet and sober. In truth, though, nothing fazed him. While we pushed and fell and fought against every obstacle, he passed by with lightness and subtlety along a path that was clear as day to him and his horse. This grand adventure of ours was possibly an ordinary day’s ride for a nomad returning home after a visit to friends.
Over the course of the journey, the companionship I felt from the sight of these hoofprints was something I would come to experience time and time again. In remote areas, the tracks of wild animals, horses, or humans provided solace, comfort, and clues to the puzzling lay of the land. It helped me ignore my fears, engaging me in a guessing game as to where the tracks might be headed and why. When finally we would depart from one set of tracks, it was like saying farewell to an old friend.
After six hours of heavy trudging, we were heartened when the mist dissipated slightly and the triangular silhouette of a cairn, known as an ovoo, came into view. It was a humble pile of rocks scattered with fragments of dried curd and a tattered blue silk scarf known as a khadag. A few craggy tree branches were planted in the middle of the pile. Ovoos like this had been a familiar sight on mountaintops and passes across Mongolia for centuries, if not thousands of years, possibly originating as marker cairns for navigation but also, and more important, functioning as sites of worship where travelers paused to venerate the mountains and offer acknowledgment and prayer to tengri, the eternal blue sky. The triangular structure, sometimes created with timber rather than stone, was, according to some, meant to symbolize the shape of the rising sun and pay tribute to its life-giving rays. This reflected the ancient animistic beliefs of Mongolians who, since time immemorial, considered the sky their father and the earth their mother. Ovoos were usually only found in the highest places, since it was there that sky, sun, and earth all married.
Following tradition, we walked around the ovoo in a clockwise direction three times, offering a new rock to the pile with each circle. In another context we might have felt like foreigners going through the motions of performing another culture’s ritual, but here it provided a sense of comfort to know that something had borne witness to our presence there.
Just below the ovoo we dropped down a crumbly slope of clay and rock and emerged from a curtain of mist into daylight.
Boggy permafrost gave way to sturdy ground, and the sun’s rays gently filtered down, bathing us with warmth that had been unimaginable in recent days. The only sign of storms here were wispy trickles of mist that boiled over the lip of the east-west-running ridge we had crossed, evaporating in the face of the sun. While the southern side had been treeless and windswept, the slopes here were thickly carpeted with larch forests that extended as far north as we could see. Following the tracks of the horseman, we descended at a good pace until the wind came to a standstill and we began to hear the bubbling of a stream, the cackle of birds, and the whine of cicadas. The cold and storms had become a memory, packed away like the rainproof coats and warm layers of clothing we had been living in for days.
We remounted the horses, and for the next few hours followed the twists and turns of the stream as it led us ever deeper into a forested valley. The horses pushed through the same waist-high grass where the phantom rider clearly had been, and I fell into rhythm with my horse, imagining that the mountain pass had delivered us into another time.
It was precisely this kind of high, forested backcountry that had so shaped the outlook and beliefs of Genghis Khan. Unlike nomads of the open steppe grasslands, he had grown up on the southern fringes of the Siberian forests, where reliance on grazing sheep and cattle wasn’t possible. Hunting was a mainstay of his small tribe’s survival, and whenever there was trouble in his life, he learned to retreat to the
forest, where nature afforded him sustenance and protection. In one legendary episode, at the age of sixteen he managed to narrowly escape a deadly raid on his family by fleeing to the forested Khentii Mountains, not far from the place of his birth in present-day northeast Mongolia. There, surviving on marmots, rats, and whatever else he could find, he managed to evade capture. According to The Secret History of the Mongols, the future leader later voiced his gratitude to the highest mountain in the Khentii range, Burkhan Khaldun, by removing his belt and throwing it over his shoulder, then dropping to the ground nine times toward the south. “The mountain has saved my life. I shall not forget it,” he said.1
Right up until the end of his days, Genghis would return to Burkhan Khaldun Mountain to worship and pray before going off to war or making any important decisions. Victory was always a sign that he had been given divine power and permission from Tengri, the eternal blue sky.
Just as the yellow disc of the sun began to touch the jagged skyline of the forest, our mood swung. We had lost the horseman’s tracks, and the slopes of the valley side had become so steep we were forced to lead the horses along narrow ledges and crisscross from one riverbank to the other. The forest had been gutted by a wildfire, and where trees might have once bloomed with color and crawled with birds and squirrels, bare, sooty trunks fingered their way toward the sky. A sea of willow-herb had been the first to seed on the ground below us, and its millions of bobbing purple flower heads were the only living thing to catch the lingering light. No nomads had been here for a long time, and perhaps they had never grazed their animals in the upper reaches of this valley.
By the time dusk came on we were feeling marginally more positive. After negotiating the steepest section of the valley, we had reached a broad, open meadow on the riverbank, and set about making camp. Just as we were tying down the guy ropes, there came a howl from down the valley.