A few weekends ago some friends and I decided to take a road trip north, with our awesome Mongolian buddy and his car, to the city of Darkhan. Mongolia's second city - the capital has a population of 1.8 million-ish, Darkhan has a population of around 75,000, so they aren't really in the same category...
The main reason to visit Darkhan was to visit what I had heard was a beautiful monastery "closeby". Being in Mongolia, closeby turned out to mean a 90 minute drive, half of it on dirt road.
But the site didn't disappoint. A stunning day, a stunning location and a pretty cool monastery made for a great site to visit in Mongolia.
The trip was organised in very Mongolian style. There had been some casual suggestions of taking a road trip at some point in time, and an awareness that a few of us were in town while most of the volunteers were heading further north for a week-long trip. Our Mongolian buddy called on Friday night, about 9pm, and said let's go at 9am on Saturday morning. Great! The car could fit 4. With our fantastic communication skills 6 people were lined up to come. With the benefit of hindsight it was great that one bailed and 5 of us managed to squeeze into a 4 seater car.
Since we were heading north, and traveling between two cities, we actually had paved roads to travel on! An amazing novelty in Mongolia, we traveled about 4.5 hours on paved roads to reach Darkhan and explored for the afternoon.
On the way into town we passed these massive statue of a man, a PR stunt by the local industrial factory!
We found a huge park, with different features for each of the horoscope signs. A bit dilapidated, it was hard to tell if it was just because it was winter, or if the place really hadn't been used for twenty years.
A feature of children's playgrounds seem to be super-steep slippery dips, dangerously steep slippery dips:
The town was very pleasant: no traffic, no pollution, no rude people. We had dinner at the local hangout - it was relatively gourmet - everything tasted good, and the service wasn't terrible. We were blown away.
The traffic lights even had these counters to show how long until the lights would change!!
The next day we set out for the famed monastery, not really knowing where to go. We were blessed with a gorgeous day, sun shining and probably around -10 to -5. I actually shed the winter coat for a while, for the first time since October!
In the main forecourt of the monastery there was a line up to undergo some kind of "re-birthing" process. The person climbs into this stone structure that is clearly not big enough for a person, struggles to stand inside, turn around three times and then emerge - reborn!
Who cares about a monastery?
The special thing about the monastery, other than it's beautiful location, is that it is one of the oldest architectural pieces still existing in Mongolia. Being a nomadic society there were always few buildings...most were monasteries built after Buddhism took off a while ago. But when the Soviets came they were less then enthusiastic about religion in any kind, and with little regard for history they not only tore down almost every monastery in the country but systematically purged an estimated 35,000 monks. This has left only a handful of buildings pre-1930 in the whole country - none still completely in-tact. Somehow this monastery managed to keep a few buildings through the destruction...no one knows how, it's got nothing on its former glory though.
There are three other key sites - one in UB, one in the Gobi, and one at the ancient capital, Kharkhorum, each of which I have managed to visit.
The monastery is also special as it was built to honor Mongolia's most famous artist, Zanabazar.
Slightly more academic writing on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarbayasgalant_Monastery
The Highlight?
Despite the pollution-free, friendly city of Darkhan and the gorgeous monastery, the highlight of the trip was undoubtedly the dj skills of our Mongolian buddy..introducing us to fantastic western-artists most of us had never heard of. For example:
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