Going to See a Giant Man on a Giant Horse

Today is the day to see Chinggis Khaan.  English translation for those who must translate names is Gengis Khan.  This is the guy who famously united the Mongolian tribes and conquered the Chinese, becoming the Father of Mongolia.  (Very abbreviated history lesson)  We slept in because the drive from our lodging to the statue isn't very far, and when we got close, our driver pulled over so I could take a picture of the entrance.

Kind of a nice shot of the complex from there, too.

It's a pretty imposing statue on top of a 3-story building that houses a museum, some shops, and a cafe.  The statue itself stands 40 meters (130 ft) tall and is made of stainless steel.  It is erected at the site where legend says Chinggis found the golden whip.  Legend has it that before he was known as Chinggis Khan and was just lowly little ol' Temujin, his wife was kidnapped by a rival tribe.  While he was riding to a different tribal leader to ask for help rescuing his wife, he stopped at this location and found a golden whip.  Finding a whip was a sign of fortune and great leadership, and the one he found was golden, so...  Legend has it that finding this golden whip was an omen that was used to help him unite the tribes to fight off the Chinese, Russians, and others to develop the largest contiguous land empire in all of history, approximately 9 million square miles (23-24 million sq km).  From what I can tell, the original golden whip no longer exists and there are no historical accounts that factually back this up, but it is clearly part of the oral history of the time.  You can see the golden whip in his right hand, resting under his knee.

When we entered the complex, before even entering the building, you could see the people who were on the statue, walking around his horse's head.

After climbing the steps to the building, we entered to see the largest traditional Mongolian boot.  It is an inflatable, but it's also huge.

Then, we went to the museum and saw lots of things.  Coins and dishes from Chinggis Khan's time and battle clothing,

and formal wear

and weapons

Finally, we took the elevator up to the top and a short flight of steps up to Chenggis Khan's crotch, which is how you exit onto the horse's neck.  You can see the golden whip on the left (Khan's right) and his sword holstered on the right (Khan's left), and I'm right between his legs at the bottom of the stairs.

For 250 tons of brushed steel, it has a surprising amount of detail!

This is the statue from the grounds on the side that he is facing, and the statue faces the Onon River, where he was born, which also is an easterly direction, so he is also facing the rising sun.

We drove by Turtle Rock on the way to lunch at the Resort World Terelj Hotel.  I guess the girl at the sales talk in Pigeon Forge was right when she said they had a hotel in Mongolia.  But I was also right, it wasn't where I needed it to be to see snow leopards!

I also thought it was very interesting how the Mongolians raise their power poles.  Look closely.  They just lashed the existing posts (darker) to new posts (lighter) that were put in the ground!  Talk about ingenuity! 

We went to the Aryabal Meditation Temple with 108 stairs meant to symbolize an elephant's trunk.  Looking at the path and those steps made me question some of my life's choices, the choice to go to the Tibetan style temple being the most recent.  After all of the things we had done this trip, I just didn't think I could make those steps.  I would have been happy to let them go up while I waited, but they stayed down, too.  I would love to see a Tibetan style monastery, but why do they all have to be so hard to get into?

There are multiple paintings on the cliff walls above the monastery.  They symbolize different dieties.

We decided to make it a short day and just use the rest of the time to get packed for the trip back to Ulaanbaatar.  On the way back to the lodge, we saw this Cinerous vulture.  You know what I say about a bad picture being better than no picture at all.

We got up the next morning and had breakfast and headed out.  We were the last guests at the lodge, so we gave the chef a ride to town, too.  It's a great lodge.  We stayed inside the building, but they also had a ger camp

and these pods that were like tiny homes, but not really so tiny

This ruddy shelduck came out to bid us a fond farewell after the last workers at the lodge sent us off with a milk blessing before locking up behind us and heading out themselves.

Just outside of Ulaanbaatar, we had to change cars because the city has pollution control measures that include only allowing cars to drive on certain days based on their tag numbers, and our driver had the car with tags that couldn't drive.  As we got into Ulaanbaatar, we saw that there are lots of statuary, and you know how much I like statuary.  There was also lots of pollution, so I had to clean these up a lot to take the haze out of them.

We did stop for yarn.  Ariuna was awesome finding us a place we could purchase yarn instead of finished products.  And timing was right so I was able to Facebook call Chrissy so she could pick her yarn.  It was surprisingly cheap.  I got her 4 skeins: 2 cashmere, 1 yak, and 1 camel for the equivalent of about $25 total.  I might have gotten her more if I had more room in my suitcase!  Then, Ariuna got us deposited in our hotel room for the rest of our stay in Mongolia.  It was a nice place.  Since this would be the last time we saw her, I gave her the other pair of hand warmers for the snow leopard camp, and hugs.  It's been a great time with her, both at the snow leopard camp and in Terelj.  Tomorrow will be exploring Ulaanbaatar with Khos.