The skies had cleared while we were at Övör Badarkhundaga Nuur, but the moment we left it clouded over and the wind picked up. Soon we were deluged with mixed rain and sleet. The wind blew into our faces, pummeling us with sleet, and finally we could not even make the horses walk into the wind. We ducked behind the Otgon Tenger Ovoo for half an hour to get out of the wind and after it subsided continued on to our campsite on the Övör Bogdyn Gol. There was no chance of getting a fire started so we just retired to our tents with no hot dinner or tea. We rose the next morning to a drizzle and quickly packed up and left, again with no hot meal or tea. We hoped to reach some firewood by noon.
We reached the head of Övör Bogdyn Gol and crossed 9302-foot Turgenii Davaa amidst yet another downpour. On the other side we followed Turgenii Gol downstream to the first two gers we saw and popped into one, where an old man and his wife agreed to let us use their stove to cook lunch and make tea.
For the first twenty minutes the old couple had nothing whatsoever to say. The woman busied herself helping the horsemen cut up mutton and potatoes and the old man sat quietly puffing on his long-stemmed pipe. Then I asked the old man if he had ever heard of the Diluv Khutagt. He kept silent, but his wife piped up that her grandfather was related somehow to the family of the Diluv Khutagt. She know all about his sojourn in America and repeated what we had already heard about the current Diluv’s incarnation and his visit to Otgon Tenger. She maintained he was a Kalmyk, born into the Kalmyk community in New Jersey. I have not been able to confirm this. She also related a lot of other lore which I will deal with in a separate post. Before we left she gave me some artz which she said came from Övör Badarkhundaga Nuur.
From this place, known as Khalteriin Ekh, we crossed 8907-foot Khökh Khamar Davaa (Blue Nose Pass). The rest of the afternoon we crossed a number of low passes separating the drainages of small, unnamed creeks before arriving in early evening at the Khökh Nuur, the bigger of the two lakes on the west side of Otgon Tenger. We had ridden 21.3 miles (34.3 km for you decimal heads) for the day, our longest ride of the trip, and I was exhausted. I had just gotten over a bad bout of pneumonia before coming on this trip, and I was still taking four different plant medicines I had gotten from Ganbaatar, a doctor of traditional Mongolian medicine at Manba Datsan. He had mentioned that they might make me weak, and this certainly seemed to be the case. We stopped at the ger of some friends of our horsemen and after eating a meal cooked on their stove I collapsed in my tent. (I will admit that I did manage to sneak in a few pages of Gurdieff: Making a New World before falling asleep.)
Gers at Khökh Nuur where we spent the nightThe next morning—the beginning of our last day on the Khora—the sky was a perfect dome of cobalt blue from horizon to horizon—the first morning without rain we had had on the trip. We had a leisurely breakfast and finally packed up and headed over the ridge to the west of Khökh Nuur. Climbing through a larch forest—the first real forest we had encountered on the trip, we finally arrived at Khoid Dayan Ovoo. From here there are spectacular views of Khökh Nuur and the whole Otgon Tenger massif. Batbayar says this is one of the most sacred spots in Zavkhan Aimag and that many people come here to make offerings. He claims it was used by shamans even before the advent of Buddhism.
Khökh Nuur from Khoid Dayan Ovoo
Khoid Dayan Ovoo
Batbayar prostrating at the Khoid Dayan Ovoo
Otgon Tenger from the Khoid Dayan OvooFrom the Khoid Dayan Ovoo we continued on to Tsagaan Nuur, where Batbayar lives. We stopped at his ger for lunch and then continued on over a series of glacial moraines to the Children's Camp, where we had started.
Tsagaan NuurThe total distance of the Khora was 70.9 miles (114.1 km for you unrepentant decimal-heads) measured between twenty-five checkpoints, which we did in five days. We had prostrated to the mountain at the appropriate places, offering khadags (prayer scarves) and burned artz at the main ovoo, and I had repeated the Om Mani Padmi Hum mantra over 10,000 times while we were riding. Hopefully we had paid sufficient respect to the mountain. Whether our actions will have any beneficial effect on this and subsequent incarnations remains to be seen.
