We both slept very well in our little single beds (not sure what others had, although come to think of it we are the only "real" couple as we have 2 ladies who are just friends and a brother/sister pairing plus 4 singles).
Unfortunately I had a nasty surprise soon after I'd woken. During the night I'd been stretching my legs out and touching the wooden frame at the end of the bed and idly wondering how many other bare feet had touched it - yuk! Anyway moving the bedding around in the morning I then made a horrific find.
As you can imagine I was absolutely appalled as the only conclusion one can make for their presence is that the bed hadn't been changed. Fortunately, because it was a little chilly last night, I was unusually wearing PJs otherwise I think I'd have wanted to scrub myself down in the shower.
The staff, sweet as they are, barely speak English and so after breakfast we hung around waiting for Oogii to arrive and typically there was no sign of him. Eventually I spoke to Pudu and tried to stress upon him just how horrible it felt. I think he understood but we then watched him for about 1/2 an hour going up and down the line of gers, presumably seeking guidance from Oogii, before approaching who we later realised was the manageress (she looked about 16) himself - presumably Oogii said "you're my No.2, go and deal with it" or something. I think Mongolians, like many Asian people are very anxious not to cause offence or be disrespectful so having to deal with a situation like this would give him a lot of angst. To give her her due, she appeared to be mortified and through Pudu we had a long exchange and I showed her the photo. She offered to move us to a new ger for our second night which we readily accepted and quickly repacked our cases so they could move them to the new ger when it was ready.
The view looking towards the Kangai Mountains was superb this morning.
I started to
type a brief history of Karakorum but it all got so complicated with the
various different dynasties, I gave up.
In a nutshell Chinggis Khan went there around 1218 where it was more like a
ger camp, his son and successor Ogedei erected
city walls around 1235 and built a fixed palace where he stayed twice a year. Then it was sacked and rebuilt numerous
times, the last of which was early 16th century. The Erdene Zuu Monastery was then built on top
of the city around 1535 and evidence of the original city was only excavated in
1933.
The museum was opened in 2011 and is dedicated to exhibiting artefacts from Mongolian history; it contains thousands
of historical artefacts from the Orkhon Valley, documenting periods spanning
from the Stone Age and the Hunnu, Uyghur, and Göktürk empires to the great
Mongol Empire.
From there we went to the Erdene Zuu (Hundred Treasures) Monastery which was built in 1585 and is probably the oldest Buddhist Monastery in Mongolia. Stones from Karakorum were used in its construction with the planners
attempting to create a surrounding wall that resembled a Tibetan Buddhist
rosary featuring 108 stupas (108 being a sacred number in Buddhism), but
this objective was probably never achieved.
The monastery's temple walls were painted, and the Chinese-style roof
covered with green tiles. The monastery
was damaged in 1688 during one of the many wars between ethnic Mongol groups
and the locals dismantled the wooden fortifications of the abandoned monastery.
In 1939, the communist leader ordered the monastery destroyed, as part of a political purge that destroyed hundreds of monasteries in Mongolia and killed more than ten thousand monks. Three small temples and the external wall with the stupas survived the initial onslaught. By 1944 Stalin pressurized the leader to maintain the monastery as a showpiece for international visitors to prove that the communist regime allowed freedom of religion. After the fall of communism in Mongolia in 1990 the monastery was turned over to the lamas who restored it as a place of worship. Today, it is an active Buddhist monastery as well as a museum that is open to tourists.
There's no particular to the order of the pictures nor do I know what, specifically, the buildings are (I wasn't paying attention!).
We had a local expert guide who told us in great details about the wall paintings in these buildings but photography was forbidden.
Two door knockers.
This building is still used for religious purposes and despite being asked (ie. told very nicely) that photography was strictly forbidden inside, one of our group chose to ignore that - she might have got away with it if she had turned the sound down on her phone, but the loud click every time was a bit of a giveaway.
We've seen one or two couples dressed up visiting the buildings (far less than in China where it was almost obligatory in some places), these two were on honeymoon.
