Our pilgrimage to Khamarin Khiid almost didn’t happen.
On the morning before we were to leave, I got a call from the folks down there saying, “Oh, it’s very busy. There are no cars.” As in, no vans to get us from the train station to the ger camp, and none to get us to the monastery and sacred sites.
“Um, you know I’m coming with 25 people who all have bought their train tickets already, right?”
“Yes, we’re trying. Very sorry. The governor ordered some of our cars for a scientific group. We couldn’t say no.”
Ah, adventures in petty fiefdoms.
I figured I’d start at the top to work this out, and got in touch with Sharavdorj, who’s an MP from there as well as born and raised. Sometimes I’m smart. Within an hour he’d hooked us up. The next day we left breathing easy.
But the breathing easy part didn’t last too long. The deeper the train plunged into the Gobi, the more the wind kicked up. Then the car attendant had us close all the windows.
“Ikh shoroo orch baina.” Big dust storm coming.
She wasn’t exaggerating. First the gray-brown clouds billowed up from the horizon, then they obscured the sun, and then the train curved around and got swallowed by the sand.
The car windows revealed total, violent brown-out. City Mongols stared out in wonder and not a little fear. We could barely see the power poles that run parallel to the track. I recalled Altangerel’s response when I asked him if I could do another short cave retreat this spring.
“Not a good idea,” he said. “This time of year the storms come suddenly. If you’re caught outside, you can get really disoriented and lost. Also, the dust and sand can be so thick you can barely breathe. Either way you risk your life. Seriously.”
Noted. Retreat re-scheduled for October.
The storm was still raging as we pulled into Sainshand. No choice but to disembark and eat it. Literally. I swaddled my head in my upper robe, but still sand blew into every orifice. Passengers huddled on the lee side of whatever shelter they could find, including each other. Everyone looked so insignificant, fragile. It was a good lesson, a typical Gobi lesson.
Fortunately, our drivers were right on time. We enthusiastically piled in and zoomed off, racing the impending sunset. Even so, we temporarily lost the desert track a couple of times, but not too alarmingly. One only has to follow the electric lines to get to the camp. After a small hot meal, we turned in early. It was going to be action-packed the following day.
The day we had come for was Saga Dawa Duchen, the most important holy day on the Buddhist calendar. It honors the extraordinary events of Shakyamuni Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and parinirvana (passing into “remainderless nirvana,” ie, no body anymore). It’s said that due to the colossal merit generated by these events, any action performed by the faithful on these days – positive or negative – increases in force by 10,000,000 times. We wuz good boys and girls, natch.
Having a ger to myself, I woke up early, roused by a truly welcome five minutes of rain just at dawn. I started the day with the confessional ceremony the ordained perform on the new and full moon. Then I read aloud the longish Ariyapariyesana Sutra (“The Noble Search”) in which the Buddha describes how one should abandon, as he did, seeking after that which is subject to birth, ageing, sickness, death, sorrow, and defilement – impermanent worldly phenomena – and instead seek the “unborn, unageing, deathless, sorrowless, and undefiled supreme security from bondage, Nirvana.” Solid advice, that.
The group had decided on a meatless diet for the day, so we dined on milk rice and these fabulously addictive twisty cruller things they make. A short intro from yours truly and off we went.
First item on the agenda was a feast offering in the Padmasanbhava Temple. They were already rockin’ out in the “yellow tradition” temple, so I went there to pay my respects to the head honcho, Dush Lama. I told him what we were up to and was shocked by his response.
“No!” he said “No way. That’s only to be done on the 10th and 25th days. No. Everyone should be in here joining with this chanting.”
“Um, but, I cleared this with Altangerel several weeks ago…”
“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?!”
So I quietly said OK, you're the boss, and went to tell the group. We had just started dismantling our offerings when Baatar Lama came in and said, “Dush Lama wants to know how long this will take.”
“Ninety minutes, two hours max.”
“OK then. You can do it.”
And so we did. The highlight for me was that one of our oldest members, a deeply devout Buddhist named Chulundulam, oversaw the ritual aspects. I’m afraid that as the chant leader, I really couldn’t take photos. Afterward, however, I got a very nice portrait of Chulundulam and her granddaughter Sugar (I swear; pronounced “soo-gar”, tho).

They look positively regal, don’t they? Dig this: Sugar has lived in Istanbul for the past eight years training as a competitive bodybuilder! Not the usual track for a Mongol woman. She’s returning there very soon, just as my nineteen-year old nephew will be visiting. Think he’d like to meet her? Hmm…
Her appearance was most welcome also because regular DODR reader and commenter Carol of Seattle is here and joined us on this trip. It just so happens Carol lived for four years in Turkey and before you knew it, the two of them were happily chatting away in fluent Turkish.
Here’s Carol (on the right) and the other ladies paying homage at the Dakini Ovoo where it’s ladies-only and us fellas have to stay to the side and just snap pics. Chulundulam’s got a particularly stylish way of tossing on offerings, huh?

Well, check out Darisuren (in the orange). Looks like she’s throwing out the first pitch of the season!

From there it was off to Shambhala. Given the still-brisk wind, the group elected to drive rather than walk. Once inside, the first stop was depositing lists of one’s bad deeds into the “Stomach of the Hungry Ghost” to be set on fire and thus purified. Here, Carol burns hers up while Sugar prays that it really works and one diligent pilgrim in the back furiously scribbles a few more naughties that she just remembered.

As always, vodka offerings toward the sacred mountain of the Third Noyon Khutagt (Danzan Ravjaa was the fifth) were hurled into the air with great gusto. Unfortunately, the wind often blew the liquid back and all of us got such a vodka shower that I secretly rejoiced we had no smokers on the trip. It would be hard to convince the group that self-immolation was a positive sign.

Then to the power center, the “brain ovoo” at the back of the site. It’s here that Danzan Ravjaa said if one sang his song “Perfect Qualities” just once it would be like performing 1000 Green Tara pujas. Needless to say, the ladies belted it right out. These pictures crack me up for two reasons. One is that there is this idea that if you raise your arms you get the full jolt of cosmic energy available here. But honestly, doesn’t it look like a come-to-Jesus revival meeting? The other funny thing is how the two guys on the right are too cool to raise their arms.


I had suggested after they sing that we all just sit and meditate, resting in our natural minds, free from discursive thinking. That went great – for about 60 seconds. One dubious quality of this ovoo is that it seems the only spot for miles that you can get cell phone reception. So very quickly several in our party were excitedly shouting into their phones. I found out later that the gist of all their conversations was like this:
“Dude, you’ll never guess where I am! I’m at the energy center at Shambhala in the Gobi! Totally, dude! I called you to send you some of the energy! Can you feel the energy? Raise one of your arms! What? Speak up! I can hardly hear you! Praise Jesus!”
It was annoying to the point where it became hilarious.
Carol said she had had this thing to go to the Gobi Desert since she was small. To my mind, there’s no more classic Gobi vista than the expanse behind Shambhala. So I took her picture with her new friend Saraa so she’d have the memory back in Seattle.

Last stop was the meditation cave site. Not much to say about this, but I will share a fabulous photo in which I captured the exuberant silliness of my young friend Amarjargal, while her loving mama Baljinnyam (in pink short-sleeve) looks on.

Back to Sainshand, where we were surprised to encounter a host of fancy, classic cars until I remembered that I had met the Swiss guy last year who was organizing a Peking-Paris road rally to commemorate the same event from 100 years ago.
The group took in the Danzan Ravjaa Museum while I met with Altangerel to get everything squared away with him before I leave for America.
The most touching part of the whole journey came on the train platform before we boarded. The grandma, Chulundulam, came up to me and said it had been her life’s dream to come to Khamariin Khiid but until now there had been every kind of obstacle. It was one of the highlights of her life, she said, and she would be devoted to Guru Rinpoche until the day she died.
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