In Search of Genghis Khan

by Tim Severin

  ‘Tell him that I insist, and that crupper straps are used on horses all over the world, in many countries. Without it the saddle will slip when going up and down hills.’

  I could see the herdsman was unconvinced. But I was adamant that the strap had to be fitted, and reluctantly the herdsman agreed. However, he wanted to fit the strap himself. I showed him how the loop at the end of the strap should slide over the stump of the horse’s tail. Gingerly he picked up the tail to slip the tail loop in place, but he was so nervous that he failed entirely. The horse sensed his hesitation and scuttled out of reach. The herdsman tried again to fit the strap around the tail, and again fumbled the job. It was absurd how a man who had worked with horses all his life, and had probably picked up that particular horse in his arms time and again when it was a foal and taken it to its mother, could not now lift up the tail and fit the crupper strap because the task was utterly unfamiliar to him. As politely as possible, I took the crupper strap from him, lifted the tail and slid it in place. The horse did not even stir. The owner of the horse looked astonished, and his circle of colleagues guffawed with delight. I suggested to the herdsman that he might like to try riding in the saddle, and he mounted and rode around. He still could not believe that the horse did not object to the crupper strap, so reached back and tugged on it several times. The horse paid no attention, and finally the herdsman gave a grin of pleasure and a nod of approval.

  With no more than a couple of dozen small gers behind their wooden palisades, the reason for Mandal’s existence was still its lamasery, just as it had been in the days before the wholesale destruction of the Mongolian church. Three pagoda-like buildings with upswept roofs of greeny tiles formed the monastery complex. Presumably they had once been chapel, dormitory and offices and stores, but now the structures were dilapidated and empty, so it was impossible to identify their original function. There was grass growing on the roofs, beams had come away from their joints and fallen askew, sections of the had slid to the ground and lay broken in heaps, and there were gaping holes in the mud walls through which cattle wandered to use the interior of the main temple and the adjoining residences as byres. But the lamasery could be restored without too much difficulty. It had not been bulldozed or vandalised, and the buildings were basically intact.

  What was important was that a tiny monastic community was again in active occupation. There were just six lamas at Mandal, plus their Head Lama, and because the main buildings were uninhabitable they were conducting their services in a new, gleaming white ger planted in the very centre of the old monastery complex. A notice above the painted wooden door to the ger announced that it was the temporary Mandal monastery.

  I enjoyed the irony of this little ger-lamasery. Forty years earlier a feature of the great anti-church campaign organised by the communists had been their ‘Red Gers’. These were indoctrination centres set up in the villages by Party cadres. In the Red Gers they had preached the Party line, enrolled herdsmen, and consolidated their control over the region. Now, from what might be called a White Ger, the counter-reformation was taking place. As we sat inside the ger-lamasery and talked about its future, the elderly Head Lama, who must surely have been in his 80s, wanted me to make no mistake and understand that it was only a temporary arrangement. He and his monks had been promised government funds to restore the original lamasery buildings, and would begin work the next year. I asked where they had made their homes during this past half-century.

  ‘We were living quietly among the local people,’ he replied gently, ‘and praying for the restoration of our faith.’

  As our riding team prepared to move on, he and his elderly colleagues hobbled out of the ger-lamasery and assembled in a group to say a formal farewell. Some of the lamas were so bent and elderly that they needed their staffs to support them as they lined up. As they stood there in the sunshine, wearing their brilliant robes, I was irresistibly reminded of Beatrix Bulstrode’s observation that the ‘deep red, mid orange and pale cinnamon colours’ of a lama congregation ‘suggested great borders of parrot tulips.’

  The track out of Mandal led past the monastery’s twin ‘guardians,’ a seated Buddha and a ferocious green-painted monster sculpted into the flat sides of large boulders which flanked the trail. An hour’s ride further on a camp of cattle-herders gave us a belated lunch of clotted cream and bread, and their leader also presented us with another gift horse. Paul, who had to ride it the next day, claimed that it was a nasty tearaway beast which swerved erratically and dangerously, but at least it was fit and eager and that made a change from our previous lacklustre mounts. After that we saw no more herdsmen all day, for we entered on a great expanse of rolling downland where there was no surface water. Everything was on an overwhelming scale. The occasional boulder stood as high as horse and rider, and lordly falcons well over 2 feet tall sat on the ground and glared at us as we passed, not bothering to flap away even if we rode by 20 yards from them. The soil was increasingly sandy, and the drought had turned the wispy grass to a pale sage-green except in the patches where the ground squirrels made their burrows. Perhaps the ground squirrels disturbed the soil so that it held rainwater better or maybe they picked the moister patches of land for their homes, but you could identify their colonies from the tell-tale patches of brighter green grass. We tried to avoid these spots, for they were honeycombed with the small burrows and treacherous. When a running pony put his foot into a hole, horse and rider went sprawling.

  Our guides were real drivers, and as the evening drew in we did not halt, but went faster and faster, ending with a mad flailing gallop into an approaching thunderstorm, with the horses pounding upwind into the gale, the breath whistling through their nostrils. It was an exhilarating end to the day and we hurried to erect the flapping, slatting tents before we were drenched by the rain. A hundred yards away a team of shepherds, the only humans we had seen in 20 miles, were looking after a pump well from which they gave us water for the horses.

  We kept to ourselves that evening, eating in the shelter of the tents without going near the shepherds. It seemed strange to be stand-offish in that featureless land, surrounded by mile after mile of open, meagre grazing, with absolutely nothing in sight except the rolling contours of the uninhabited downs. But I supposed that our guides did not want to impose on the hospitality of the shepherds or risk upsetting their horses by coming too close with our half-wild animals. In any event, we were getting on with the job of saddling up our horses next morning, which had dawned sunny and clear, when there was an incident which finally destroyed what little hope there was of continuing in Ariunbold’s company.

  The relay horses that Ariunbold had been riding for the past week had all been laggards. This was pure bad luck since normally he made sure that the guides gave him the best horse among the remounts. But for the last few days matters had been very different. He had been riding a series of glue-footed mounts, and left trailing along in the wake of the main party that he was supposed to lead. He had flailed away with his whip trying to get his mount to go faster, but with little success. No one had paid him much attention, and most of us were rather glad that he was safely in the background while we got on with covering the daily riding distance. Ariunbold had become increasingly irritable, and his temper was fraying to the point that he seemed to have spent most of the previous day beating his horse with a dull and mindless monotony. A couple of times on the previous day he had managed to ride past us at a slow gallop, his face set grimly, and steadily thrashing his sluggish horse.

  When Ariunbold approached this same horse that morning to put on its saddle, the animal balked. It reared up and tried to escape, obviously detesting the man who had ridden it so callously all the previous day. Ariunbold, who was holding the halter, was suddenly jerked off his feet and ignominiously dragged for a few yards. Delger gave a shout and ran to the rescue. He calmed the rebellious animal and handed it back to Ariunbold, who had dusted himself off and once again tried to put on the saddle. Again the h
orse flung back, trying to escape its tormentor. Delger was obliged to restrain the animal with a hobble while Ariunbold put on the saddle. By now the rest of us were ready to ride out and were watching Ariunbold. He put the saddle in place, removed the hobble and, when the horse again tried to run away, successfully restrained the animal with the lead rope. He was just about to mount when the horse, realising that it could not break free, showed its objection by lying down. It was an act of pure stubborn rebellion, and a mark of the animal’s intelligence. It simply folded up its forelegs, dropped to its knees, rolled on one side and lay there flat on the ground, not moving.

  Ariunbold stood there, looking uncertain what to do. Delger called out something. He was probably telling Ariunbold to give the horse a stroke of the whip to show who was master and to get it back to its feet. Ariunbold still had the free end of the rawhide lead-rope in his hand. Now he walked to the head of the prone horse and, with all the strength he could muster, he leaned across and slashed the free end of the rope spitefully three times across the animal’s face. It was the first time I had ever seen a Mongol hit a horse in the face, and I could sense shockwaves of disapproval coming from the herdsmen beside me. But more was to come. The horse flinched at the blows, lifted its head briefly, but then lay back, still refusing to get on its feet. When the horse’s head touched back on the ground, Ariunbold seemed to forget himself. He went into a black rage. Standing over the horse, he began to beat the horse steadily and viciously with blow after blow across the face. It was an act of wanton malice and committed with deliberate cruelty. The horse now could not have got back on its feet even if it had wanted to, and Ariunbold must have known it as he stood there aiming lash after lash deliberately at its head as it lay on the ground.

  There was a shocked silence from all the rest of us as we watched in disbelief, thinking that each blow would be the last. No one moved a muscle, we were so taken back. But Ariunbold kept going, hitting his victim, oblivious of the appalled audience. He stopped only after twenty or so systematic blows, and then stood back to allow the horse to get up.

  Beside me, Paul was livid with rage, and I thought for a moment that he was about to run over and assault Ariunbold. I hissed at him to hold still. From the way that everyone else avoided looking at Ariunbold as he climbed into the saddle, I could tell that we were not alone in thinking that he had behaved atrociously. Clearly, what he had done was not the Mongol way of chastising a horse, and our companions were very embarrassed. It was characteristic that our herdsmen-guides had not intervened to stop him. That was not the Mongol way, either. But no one would see Ariunbold in quite the same light again. For my own part, I decided I would prefer to continue my Mongolian journey in less distasteful company. There was so much that was worthwhile to do and see in Mongolia, without wasting time having to put up with such a travelling companion. Also I now knew that if the Mongols wanted a civilised and presentable leader for their team, they would have to look elsewhere than Ariunbold. It was a pity, because there was a great potential to the notion of a trans-continental ride to France, but in its present structure the Mongol expedition was sure to leave a bad taste if it should ever venture out beyond their borders. My responsibility was to advise the Mongolian National Committee for the UNESCO Silk Roads Project to think again about whom they should select as leader. That done, I wanted to get on with the far more interesting task of investigating the survival of Mongolia’s traditional culture. To do that, Doc, Paul and I should leave as soon as it was convenient.

  We rode for most of that morning in an uncomfortable silence. When I caught his eye, Bayar shook his head disapprovingly. His usual frivolity was gone. Paul was muttering under his breath that he would like to flog Ariunbold with the same halter he had used on his horse, and Doc who, despite being a poor rider, was very adept at gentling and calming horses clearly considered that Ariunbold had shown himself to be barbaric. Even Genghis Khan would have disapproved. Never, he had ordained, was a Mongol to strike a horse on the head.

  Doc himself was worn out. He had still not adapted to the rigours of cross-country riding, and from time to time was obliged to get down and limp beside his horse to exercise a very painful knee joint. Our two guides, Good Happiness and Bold, kept up an exacting pace. I suspected that they too had had enough of Ariunbold and wanted to finish their stage of the journey as quickly as possible and be rid of him. So it was not yet 4 o’clock when we emerged from the dry downland and saw we had reached the rim of a wide shallow valley. Approaching us at a fast trot across the floor of the valley were about twenty mounted men. They were members of the local work brigade of the little town of Dzag and had been sent by the somon committee to escort us across the river, which was flooded and hazardous.

  On the far bank a reception had been organised in the felt tent of the champion arat of the region. He was so successful that he had been put in charge of a herd of 400 horses. We were taken inside and given the standard reception of dried curd, rancid butter morsels and sugar lumps, together with the usual huge quantities of mare’s milk and shimiin arkhi chasers. We ate glumly and in silence, still depressed by the events of the morning, and when the chairman of the somon committee asked us for our plans it was Bayar who made Ariunbold take into account that four of our gift horses were now sick or lame, and we would have to halt and rest them.

  I watched as the Mongols clustered around the lamest of the gift horses. It was one of the sherry-coloured animals with the black eel-stripe down its spine and the faint zebra bars on its legs which Mongols say are tell-tale signs that the animal is descended from the Wild Horse. They pressed and tapped the shoulder, and squeezed and felt the injured leg, but again, in typical Mongol fashion, no one would venture a firm diagnosis of the injury for fear of being considered self-opinionated or, later, shown to be wrong. It was not until next day when all the onlookers and hangers-on had departed that the champion herdsman did show up quietly at our little camp on the hillside above his ger. The injured horse was led off to one side, and he nicked one of the major veins in the chest so that a steady jet of blood spurted out for about half a minute. The horse stood there motionless, except for occasionally lifting the injured leg, almost as if pressing the vein closed. Then the bleeding stopped of its own accord, and the veterinary treatment was considered done.

  Doc found a way for me, Paul and himself to extricate ourselves from the unhappy situation. Next day was to be polling day in the first free elections to be held in Mongolia since the communists took power. A ger at the base of the hill was one of the rural polling stations, and this meant that a jeep would be coming to collect the ballot box. Doc arranged for us to hitch a ride back with the jeep to the somon centre. There the polling results would be collected next dawn by a ‘Bee,’ one of Air Mongolia’s fleet of venerable yellow-painted Antonov 2 biplanes, and taken to the provincial capital. If the local somon secretary agreed, we could hitch a ride on the plane and get back to Ulaan Baatar with the minimum delay, and then find a way of travelling forward to continue our researches in the far west of the country, in the Altai. Doc was very eager to get going, and our departure would not hinder the riders. Rather the reverse, for if three of us left, Delger would have our extra horses, which would reduce the dependence on remounts, and our happy-go-lucky groom could take Ariunbold forward. Bayar was the person I felt sorry for. In theory he too had the option to leave, but there was little to attract him back to Ulaan Baatar and he would need the permission of his bosses at the Mongolian TV Film Studio. When Doc explained the situation to him, Bayar, after much heart-searching, decided that he would have to stay with Ariunbold until he reached the next provincial capital and could telephone his office. As matters turned out, he was told to continue. Paul and I liked Bayar very much, and to our regret we were not to see him again.

  We spent our final field day preparing ourselves mentally to eat a marmot. As usual it was Bayar who knew how to cook the creature properly. Two hunters had brought in a pair of marmots, neatly sho
t through the heads, and Bayar and Delger skinned their carcasses down by the river. Bayar then heated up some stones in the fire and placed the hot stones together with chunks of marmot in the pot. That was all. There was no cooking, no boiling, no spices, and Bayar had promised us a feast. Paul and I waited dubiously. We were not entirely convinced that we could bring ourselves to swallow bits of the chubby and engaging marmots, who before they were flayed had the faces of rather confused and costive aldermen. But we could not resist the chance of trying to vary our monotonous diet of sheep meat. Bayar lifted the pot lid and hooked out two blackened lumps of marmot. They looked exactly like oversize portions of rabbit. Paul and I gingerly took our rations in our fingers and bit into the flesh. The marmot meat was unexpectedly tough and stringy, but that was not the real disappointment. Pot-roast marmot was very bland. Indeed it had barely any detectable flavour whatsoever, but if it tasted of anything at all - it tasted like mutton.

  Later I commented on this disappointment to the local government official who came to pick up the ballot box next evening. We were driving to the somon centre in his jeep and he chuckled. ‘You shouldn’t tell me that you were eating marmot. I ought to arrest you! The hunting season for marmots does not open for a couple of weeks. But of course it’s difficult to keep any sort of control on the arats.’ He was a man in his early 40s, energetic and business-like, one of the new-style officials in regional government who were much less doctrinaire than the Party faithfuls who had formerly run the somon centres with a dead hand. Of course there was still a Communist Party machine in place, with a local Party chairman in each somon, but the central government was now sending professional managers to run the local administration and often they were men of high calibre. Our companion, Chief Councillor Gombo, had grown up in the somon and was glad to be back there after a career in Ulaan Baatar. He was not unduly concerned about the results of the election. The country people, he explained, were very conservative. While there was much talk in the capital about the formation of new political parties and a democratic movement in Mongolia, the arats had barely been affected. The fledgling opposition parties had made little contact with the remote somons, and he expected that the two candidates put up by the local Communist Party would win by a comfortable majority. ‘Who are the candidates?’ I asked. ‘One of them is me,’ he answered with a smile, and then began talking about his hopes and plans for the development of the region.