On the Trail of Genghis Khan Read online

  Come midmorning, the sun suddenly seemed to be upon us, but with the air still cool, what might have otherwise been terrifying appeared exquisite. The mist lifted, revealing a band of fresh snow on the mountaintops, and a slither of blue in the direction of Uvs Nuur. The breeze died, and the pale, naked land we trod on turned mute, amplifying the sense that we were far from any shore. It was only after midday, when the crippling heat began to beat down and the horses slowed to a crawl, that our spirits withered.

  In search of water, my eyes scanned the mountains to the south, where a web of cracks and crevices on the slopes promised to collect at the base in some kind of stream or river but was thwarted by what appeared to be the buildup of millions of years of rockfalls and landslides. Through these mounds a few rivulets thus reached the plains with barely enough momentum to limp out of the shadows into the baking sun.

  By keeping my head down and focusing on the end goal of each day, I was ordinarily able to keep the bigger picture of traveling to Hungary at bay, but not today. The great plain that rolled out into a horizon of heat haze was inescapable. It was too big to fathom, yet amounted to nothing in the scheme of the overall scale of the steppe. It would have been easier to drift off into the anesthesia of half-sleep and let the horses carry me, but thoughts about the great distances the Mongols once traveled in their many traverses of Eurasia kept me bolt upright.

  For a Mongol cavalry just to reach the enemy typically involved a journey of weeks, if not months. During these campaigns their armies were known to routinely travel 50 to 80 km a day. At the zenith of the Mongol Empire, horseback messengers could even gallop from Kharkhorin to Hungary in a matter of weeks, a legend seemingly confirmed by the great Venetian traveler Marco Polo, who wrote that Mongol couriers could cover 400 or even 500 km in a single day.

  Reading historical tales about such exploits, one could be forgiven for imagining the steppe as a single flat grassland through which horsemen moved with a sense of freedom and ease. Here on horseback, though, it was clear the cavalry were negotiating deserts, mountains, rivers, swamps, heat, and frosts, and somehow keeping their horses fed and healthy, even before leaving Mongolia.

  There were, of course, secrets to the Mongol ability to travel over such immense distances, which seemed all the more ingenious to me now. The much feted courier system, yam, which remains a great symbol of the efficiency and discipline with which the Mongol Empire was ruled, relied on staging posts known as ortoo every 30 to 50 km, where fresh mounts, food, and water were permanently stationed. As the rider approached, a special bell would warn the ortoo master of the impending arrival, and for urgent deliveries the rider would leap from one horse to the next and continue at a gallop. Unlike the Pony Express of the mid-nineteenth century in the United States, which was based on riders changing every 160 km or so, the Mongol messenger entrusted with the communiqué from the beginning was bound to deliver it to the very end. To protect his body from the rigors of such sustained rides and keep him upright, even when sleeping, he was bound in special strips of material and wore a thick leather belt around the waist. Today, the silk sash most Mongols wear performs a similar purpose, holding their lower abdomen tightly in place. The yam system reportedly remained in existence in Mongolia well into the twentieth century, until the Soviets began introducing roads and a mechanized postal service.

  In terms of the great roaming campaigns of the Mongols, the sheer number of horses available to them was no doubt a key to their success. Historical accounts suggest that every Mongol soldier traveled with at least one spare horse, and up to three or four. This way, they could constantly rotate the horses and ride fresh mounts. Carpini even commented that “the Tartar does not mount for three or four days afterward the horse he has ridden for one day; so they do not ride tired horses because of the great number that they have.”

  Carpini may have been describing the Mongol transport system rather than the mounted soldier, but in any case, by way of contrast with European armies at the time, the majority of European soldiers fought on foot, and their cavalry units used heavy warhorses reliant on hay and grain supplements. It is also true that the geography of Europe, with its forests, mountains, and fertile cultivated land, could not cope with the kind of large free-grazing herds that had always been an indigenous feature of the steppes. Not only was it the case that Europeans could never have hoped to achieve supremacy over the Mongols in the open terrain of the steppe, but they were also at a disadvantage when the Mongols attacked them on their own home ground.

  We plodded on until late evening, at which point we had been moving without a break for more than thirty hours but covered little more than 50 km as the crow flies. Without the energy to carry on, we made camp and collapsed.

  Come morning I was woken by a rather zealous Kathrin, who prodded and laughed until I peeled my eyes open. She had been up early to check on the horses and had scanned the distant lakeshore with our binoculars.

  “Tim! I think I can see gers!”

  I stumbled out of the tent, wiped away the dried toothpaste crusted around my lips, and brought the glasses to my eyes. Sure enough, there appeared to be nomad families on the shoreline.

  Several hours later we stumbled into a camp and were led to a well. At first it was a relief to see the horses empty out several troughs of water, which were filled by hauling up buckets from a shallow well. As we rode on along the shore through more camps, however, we began to wonder why just 65 km earlier nomads had sworn there were no people or drinking water to be found on the shores of Uvs. We had been directed to follow the main way—a series of wheel tracks—to the capital of Uvs Aimag, Ulaangom, which cut through a largely waterless desert halfway between the mountains and the lake. Had the nomads intentionally misinformed us, or did they simply not possess enough knowledge of the region?

  The experience remained a mystery until later on in the journey, when I realized that when modern nomads travel more than about 25 km from camp, they typically use mechanized transport.3 This led me to consider the vastly different experience of riding a horse versus traveling via machine, and the effect this had on traditional knowledge of the land. On a horse, one was constantly monitoring the pasture and the general lay of the terrain, keeping an eye peeled for natural paths that might preserve the horse’s energy. The slowness of the travel enabled the rider to absorb the details of each unfolding chapter of the landscape. It was inevitable, therefore, that nomads of the past would have possessed far more intimate knowledge of far greater tracts of land.

  One might argue, of course, that the convenience of a motorbike or car outweighs the importance of traditional knowledge garnered from horseback. For those nomads remaining out here, where the elements have never really changed, I couldn’t help feeling that the loss of knowledge was not to be taken lightly. In a drought or severe winter, nomads are routinely required to move beyond their usual pasturelands, and details such as being able to identify plants and their uses, or knowing where to take the animals to cover in the midst of a blizzard, can mean the difference between a herd being wiped out or clinging on.

  Having emerged from the desert plain earlier than expected, we had reached the last chapter of this leg of the journey, which would take us along Uvs Nuur, then on to Ulaangom.

  Uvs Nuur and the vast but dry basin it drains is one of Central Asia’s most northerly depressions and thought to have once been the bottom of an ancient inland sea. While nowadays a relative puddle, the 70 km stretch of water is still the largest lake in Mongolia by area, and it transformed our perspective of the landscape. Panning out to the north, its flawless surface mirrored the pale blue above, creating the giddy feeling that if I stumbled, I might fall from the saddle into the depths of the sky. It was an illusion shattered only by herds of horses that forged into the shallows from time to time, and flocks of gulls that bobbed idly about. To the south, meanwhile, the plain that had so dominated our thirsty ride was reduced to a thin yellow line, overshadowed by the range beyond, which
was still dusted with snow.

  At the southwest corner of the lake we left the shore and reached the edge of a sprawling delta of salt marshes and dry, seasonal riverbeds. During an overnight stay with a prosperous nomad family, we discovered a drunken horseman attempting to steal our horses, providing another night of sleepless drama but also the consolation of affirming we had left the dry belt of land in our wake and returned to problems of a human-made kind.

  Tired, but quietly proud that we had more or less taken the horse-stealing attempt in our stride, we rode on through lowlands of luscious tall grass that grew upon the salt marshes. There were Soviet-era bores where the horses were able to drink, and pastoral scenes of nomads grazing the prestigious tavan tolgoi mal (herds of five species). After the uncertainty of the desert, and with just 90 km to Ulaangom, we hoped to keep a low profile and settle in for a few excitement-free days. One encounter in particular, however, would prove to have far-reaching significance, although the importance wouldn’t become clear to me until more than a year and 4,000 km later.

  From a distance, there seemed to be nothing unusual when a horseman came galloping our way, his deel and whip flying, but up close I was intrigued by his unusual features. His eyes had the typical Mongol shape, long and slender, but they were a clear, translucent blue instead of brown. Assessing us, he sat groping a long gray goatee, baring some rather twisted, yellow Russian-like teeth. He wasn’t the first Mongolian I’d seen with distinctly Turkic and Caucasian features, but combined with his obvious dialect, there was something so exotic I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It wasn’t long before we were sitting in the man’s ger, where, over tea, he explained his origins.

  “We are Oirats, and our ancestors traveled to the Caspian Sea and back here. Our brothers, the ones who didn’t come back, still live there, so please bring greetings from us when you get there.”

  While Mongol is essentially an umbrella term that describes the many different tribes of the Mongolian plateau that were united under Genghis Khan, the history and identity of the Oirats, like the geography of western Mongolia, has always been somewhat distinct. A confederation of the Choros, Durvud (or Dorbet), Torghut, and Khoshut tribes, believed to have originated from the forests of southern Siberia, the Oirats fought fiercely against Genghis until the crushing of their allies the Naimans in 1204.

  Over the course of the thirteenth century, the Oirats proved to be a loyal force for the Mongols, known for their role in the battle of Homs and as Genghis’s personal bodyguards, but despite their loyalty they were never fully accepted within the circles of Mongol society.4 The Oirats were certainly not considered to be of Genghis’s lineage, and according to the unwritten laws of the empire, no Oirat could take the reins of power as khan.5

  In the wake of the collapse of the Mongol Empire, the Oirats nevertheless rose to ascendancy on the steppe, establishing a vast empire known as Zhungaria. While the story of their empire is a history unto itself, it is really after the beginning of the demise of this empire in the seventeenth century that a fascinating tale of triumph and tragedy—and an important chapter in the history of the steppe—unfolds. I will recount the details later, but here suffice it to say that the Oirats eventually fled west to the steppes north of the Caspian Sea, where they formed a new khanate known as Kalmykia. Less than two centuries later, under repression from the Russian tsar in 1771, they embarked on a mass exodus back to their roots in Asia, during which more than half perished on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Those who survived the journey regrouped as the four Oirat tribes in western Mongolia and what is today Xinjiang province in China. Those who stayed behind in Russia remained known as Kalmyks.

  The man who was now sitting before me was a Durvud, of the Oirat tribe that nowadays forms the majority in Uvs province, and whose name derives from the verb meaning “to escape.” While it is true that it is nearly impossible to distinguish Durvud Mongolians from other ethnicities by physical characteristics alone, and the features of our host might well have been due to Russian heritage from the Soviet era, I liked to think those blue eyes might have been a remnant this man had carried from his ancestors in the distant Caspian steppe.

  Taking his words seriously, I imagined for a moment relaying his greetings to his fellow countrymen on the steppes of Russia. It was, after all, a journey I was far more likely to make than this man or any of his family in their lifetimes.

  Filing away his image for another time, we climbed back onto our horses, waved goodbye, and turned again to Ulaangom.

  5

  KHARKHIRAA: THE ROARING RIVER MOUNTAIN

  A day’s ride from the camp of the Durvud man—whose name I never knew—we crested a rise at sunset to lay eyes on a glittering ensemble of mud huts, fence-enclosed gers, and a handful of Soviet-era apartment blocks. It was the end of August, and having traveled more than 1,000 km from Kharkhorin, we had reached the remote capital of Uvs province, Ulaangom.

  For three days we stayed with a family on the outskirts, relishing the chance to sleep in and taking turns traveling to the town center. Symbolic of Ulaangom’s isolation from Mongolia’s more populated central regions—and a measure of how far we had come—it was a town that relied exclusively on electricity from the power grid in the republic of Altai, in Russia, which was closer. Due to unpaid state debts to Russia there had been a summer-long blackout, and owing to this the streets were particularly quiet. There were, nevertheless, some private generators in operation, and we were able to delight in such luxuries as ice cream, sweet biscuits, and carbonated water.

  Our celebratory mood was tempered only by the fact that within a week Kathrin was scheduled to begin work as a schoolteacher in Germany. The dirt runway in Ulaangom was her ticket home, and so this far-flung town had come to represent not only a milestone on my journey to Hungary but the end of our trip together.

  As we approached this crossroads, a feeling of unease had been growing in me, and I reflected with a sense of regret that in the last two months we had been so tested and stretched simply by coping with day-to-day events that we had spent precious little time concentrating on each other. More to the point, we had barely discussed the uncertainty looming over us as a couple: Kathrin was about to disappear to the other side of the world, while I would carry on for at least another sixteen months, and that was only if everything went according to plan.

  “So what should we do?” Kathrin uttered nervously after darkness and silence had fallen on Ulaangom one night.

  Although we had been together for almost a year, Kathrin well knew I was committed to my dream of riding across the steppes, and that the dream had only grown stronger along the way. There was no turning back, and so the only way to spend time together would be if Kathrin came to join me during her vacations. At the same time, while Kathrin was ready for a more serious stage in our relationship, to me the concept of real love involved a commitment I knew I wasn’t ready for or capable of at this stage.

  Perhaps I was wrong, but I had a feeling that Kathrin, like me, sensed that breaking up was the most realistic way forward. Yet I couldn’t fathom casting off alone on this without Kathrin’s support. From Kathrin’s point of view, she was about to plunge into a new job and life in Germany, and the uncertainty she felt must have been far more immediate.

  After buying a plane ticket for her to Ulaanbaatar, we spent our last day riding south across a vast plain that angled toward the base of a dark wall of mountains known as the Kharkhiraa-Turgen massif. We had been watching these mountains grow for over a week, the 4,000 m apexes of the glacier-encrusted peaks at times coming into view and inviting thoughts of alpine pastures and river valleys. The name Kharkhiraa itself was a word that describes the roar of a river’s rapids.

  As we had come to expect in the openness of western Mongolia, what appeared to be a short ride became eight hours. We spoke little but managed to articulate a desire to remain in a relationship and see how things worked out when I arrived in Hungary, or whenever she could join me again.


  The following morning we hurried on horseback into the village of Tarialan, where we had arranged a lift back to the Ulaangom airport. Then it was all over in a heartbeat. The driver cranked the engine into life, Kathrin leaped in, and I waved goodbye. Within minutes the only visible sign that Kathrin had ever been with me was the sweat marks from her saddle on the back of her beloved Saartai Zeerd, who by now was the only remaining horse that had been with me from the beginning.

  Even as the dust trail of the car carrying her began to fade, I turned my thoughts to immediate plans. Digesting the significance of what had just happened would have to wait for another time.

  Like my own state of mind, the village of Tarialan was a place on the edge of two very different worlds. Built on the banks of the glacier-fed Kharkhiraa River at the point where its waters spew from a gorge into the sun-baked plains, it was both the end of the road for motorized vehicles and the gates to the mountains.

  From here I hoped to begin the first chapter of my journey without Kathrin by traveling west over the Kharkhiraa-Turgen range to the sandy basin on the far side. On one hand, crossing the mountains was a practical decision—the alternative was to make a lengthy detour around the massif to the north—but there was something more important that had led me to Tarialan. This humble little village was the central, and only, settlement of a minority known as the Khotons, who still live a traditional nomad life among the inaccessible slopes and valleys of Kharkhiraa-Turgen. Numbering no more than two or three thousand, the Khotons are thought to be descendants of a Turkic tribe that originated in Central Asia. Over time they had adopted the Oirat Mongolian tongue but remained distinct from other Mongolian groups, practicing customs and beliefs that are a mesh of Islam, Buddhism, and the shamanic faith of Tengrism.