Mongolian Outback: Day 6 - Drivers' Ovoo & Ongi Monastery

On day 6 of our trip, we were headed to the Ongi Monastery, a 5-6 hour drive. Along the way we had to make a few pit stops, including in Mandal-Ovoo, a town typical of where we’d stop each day for provisions.

When you're driving and driving in the middle of nowhere, there's a lot of this.

 

As you drive around the Mongolian countryside, bumpity bump, you frequently pass by large piles of stones mixed with colorful (mostly blue) strips of silk, and sometimes pieces of wood. Each of these, an ovoo, is meant to symbolize a god, which could be a deity of the mountains, nature, ancestors (including Ghengis Khan), or pretty much anything else. The ovoos originate from Mongolian shamanism and have become integrated into yellow shamanism which has intertwined with and is a part of Gelug the “Yellow sect” of Tibetan Buddhism.

Shamanism, also called the Mongolian folk religion, has been practiced since the age of recorded history. It continued as the dominant religion in Mongolia until the Yuan dynasty emperors converted to Buddhism around 1300, returned as the dominant form after the Mongol Empire collapsed during the same century, and then started to merge with Buddhism as it re-emerged in Mongolia the 1600s. Black Shamanism (the more rigorous form that did not merge with Buddhism) and Yellow Buddhism went underground during the Soviet domination and communization of Mongolia in 1921 as all religions were prohibited, and re-entered the public view in 1991 when Mongolia became a democratic country.

For me, an interesting part of traveling is learning and seeing first hand how a culture lives and has evolved over time. Understanding other cultures better helps me view and evaluate better the culture I was raised with, and spirituality is a big part of a region’s culture.

What’s my take from this? People want to believe in something. We want to believe in right and wrong. The source of right and wrong can come from many sources - Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Judiasm, Hinduism, Shamanism, morality, egalitarinism, equality, collectivism, and even the rule of might as right. However, we are also human and subject to the effects of influence, which can range from what our parents believe to outside invaders killing us if we don’t change our belief system to align with theirs. And humans, if anything, adapt to survive.

Today Mongolia is reportedly 53% Buddhist, 40% not religious, 3% Black Shaman, 3% Muslim, 2% Christian.

Today on the road we came upon another of the many, many ovoos we had encountered along the way. However, this one was the Ovoo of Drivers so Bayaná stopped the car, got out, walked around it 3 times in a clockwise direction, and added a rock to the pile to protect himself during our journey.

From there we continued to the Ongi Monastery. Spanning both sides of the Ongi River in south-central Mongolia, the Ongi Monastery was originally built in 1660, was one of the largest monasteries in the country, and housed more than 1000 monks. In 1939 during the anti-religious purges of the Communisty Party of Mongolia 200 of the monks were killed, and the survivors were either secularized, imprisoned, or conscripted into the army. All buildings were also destroyed and lay in total ruin a first temple was rebuilt in 2004.

There was a small museum on the complex that housed may artifacts. Hidden in plain sight amongst all the other items was a carved skull drinking cup. It was so regularly placed that it was easily missed (I in fact missed it. Ellen from Norway found it and took the picture below). I’d never heard of anything like this in Buddhism (this was a Yellow Buddhist temple), which just underscored for me how much religion can morph - in this case from shamanistic influence.

We overnighted in a group of gers alongside the Ongi River and next to an old but cool, castle-looking restaurant made of stone.  I brought a drone on the trip and finally figured out how to make it fly.