(Ogedai Khan, Ching-gis Khan’s son)

Ching-gis Khan and his armies made the Mongolian horse famous. They say each warrior traveled with five horses so he would always have a fresh mount. They could live for long periods on mare’s milk and blood that they drained from arteries in their horses’ necks. Blood is still an important food in Mongolia. We learned how to prepare blood sausage when we stopped for a goat feast in Hovsgol Province.

They say people in Mongolia domesticated the horse starting about 4000 years ago for its meat and milk. Evidence of riding the horse begins about 3000 years ago. I’m skeptical about dates like this: this just means the first bits and saddles archaeologists have found so far are 3000 years old. In the National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaan Baatar, we saw a saddle from 600 AD and a metal bit dated 700 BC. Both were amazingly like what is used nowadays. But, looking at the way our native Americans rode the horse with no saddle and only a rope around the lower jaw for a bridle, doesn’t it seem reasonable to think that the Mongolians were riding a long time before they developed the metal bit and wooden saddle? (There’s an interesting description of the tack used by native Americans here and old photos at Kingdomofhorses.com)

Two big innovations that revolutionized warfare were the invention of the chariot and the stirrup. Both freed the rider’s hands for handling weapons. They probably came from the nomadic tribes that ranged across the northern grasslands (the steppe) of Asia from the Black Sea to Mongolia. The chariot, starting around 2000 BC, was key in the expansion of the Chinese empire. Imagine the terrifying effect a phalanx of horse-drawn chariots would have on soldiers who had only met their enemies on foot! The cavalry came in a little later, with the invention of the stirrup, and had similar devastating effect.

Down in the Gobi, we climbed a small mountain at Haivtsgait to see ancient rock carvings. There were carvings of horses with and without riders. I’ve read one article that said the carvings there are 15,000 years old, another that said they are 5-6000 years old, and another that said they are from 300-500 BC. Maybe they’re all right. Who knows for sure?

If you clamber around among the rocks near the mountaintop at Haivtsgait, you can see that the carvings progress from the simplest shapes of hunters and prey to horses being ridden and various animals drawing carts. At the top, there is an ovoo (sacred cairn) with signs of recent use. People have come here for millennia to reach out to the spirits of mountain and sky!

People talk about how many Mongolian words there are for horses’ different colors and markings. You can see a wonderful list of sixteen at Infomongolia.com  But we forget that not so long ago horses were our “cars,” and we had as many names for horse markings and colors here in the US as any other place. My handy thesaurus lists seventeen, and I can think of a few more that aren’t on the list. How many can you name? 

Unlike our horses, Mongolian horses have super-tough hooves, and are rarely shod. They say one Mongolain strain has a smooth racing walk, sort of like our Tennessee Walkers. Those were the horses favored by Ching-gis Khan’s army.—And that must be why they were able to ride so long on those wooden saddles and conquer distant lands. The nameless little mountain horse I rode in Hovsgol certainly was not one of those: she had a slow and steady walk that enabled her to grab any juicy vegetation that passed by, and a jarring trot that shook me to the bone. But we did conquer the steep and rocky trail over the pass to the reindeer village and back.

(At Three Camel Lodge, the Gobi. Photo by Haydock.)

After moving camp every day for a couple of weeks, it felt great to settle down for five days at the Three Camel Lodge in the eastern Gobi. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, a big wooden lodge with white gers (yurts) clustered around it. It’s an “eco-lodge.” They heat the water and run the lights with solar power. Their website at threecamellodge.com tells all about it.

I had caught a cold, so I spent a couple of days sitting on the big porch of the big main lodge, watching the scenery change. The lodge backs up on a low hill that shelters it from the wind. In front, the flat land runs several miles out to low mountains, the eastern tip of the Altai mountain range. The mountains changed continually with the weather. They went from looking like huge, tall mountains to little tiny ones, and from dark, threatening precipices to pale, bare slopes.

A few hundred yards out in front of the porch, there’s a well with a watering trough. All day long, the various animal herds cross by in front of the lodge on their way for water. The goats and sheep meander over there a couple times a day with their lambs and kids. The horse herds go by, usually at a trot or canter, with the foals scrambling to stay close to their moms, and the stallion keeping everyone moving. The Gobi’s sort of a pale green now, and the rainy season starts in late July, so it’ll stay green for a while.

While we were there it was unusually rainy. You could see the big thunderheads moving across the desert miles away, with long skirts of rain trailing below them. I saw some of the most amazing lightning ever. Sadly, some of the guests got pretty bent out of shape when there were no hot showers because of the cloudy weather. They seemed a little unclear on the concept of an eco-lodge….

(We felt it was not appropriate to use our cameras during the master shaman’s ceremony. This photo shows Morley’s shaman ring. Photo by Haydock)

About 2 a.m. Morley and I made a trip to the “long drop” at the back of the yard, and returned thinking we would be leaving soon. But Tulga told us to sit tight while the shaman finished with his petitioners. After he had sent the last one from the room along with his interpreter, he surprised me by calling me to come forward.

I knelt and greeted the shaman and his spirits the way I learned from Shaman Gambat of the reindeer herders: you kneel and bow your head almost to the shaman’s lap, with your hands extended, palm up, but you aren’t supposed to actually touch him. Then he may put his hands to your head and feel around your scalp, as if exploring your state of mind.

Before I knew it, I was kneeling with my back to the shaman while he gave me a thorough back massage accompanied by some excellent counsel about my personal situation. By the time he was done, my back felt great but my knees were completely crushed, and I could only crawl back to my spot on the carpet. 

Next, it was Pacey’s turn. We probably made a mistake in telling the shaman she’s a doctor. He seemed to be alarmed at first, and a little wary. I suppose that as an energy healer he must come in for criticism from people who feel his clients should be seeing medical doctors instead. But he seemed to relax when we explained that Pacey works with children who are sick and/or handicapped. Still, when he massaged her back and her bum knee, he was little overzealous and actually left a few marks the next day.

The shaman was at his best with Morley. When she told him her wish for success in training as a clinical psychologist, he understood right away that she wanted to help people to find mental, emotional, and spiritual healing. He urged her to choose one thing at his altar that she desired to keep. When she hesitated, he decided it should be a ring, but he said that really it was Ayush, an old woman healing spirit, who should give it to her. 

He invoked Ayush, and then spoke to Morley in her persona, a cackling, bossy, hilarious old hag. Ayush poked Morley’s nose stud repeatedly and shrieked, “What’s this thing?!” She felt Morley’s face all over as if she had never before seen a foreigner. She squawked, “So different!” and then added, “—but we’re all the same!” She heard us laughing and talking, and broke into an old lady’s version of what English sounded like to her—something like “Blah blah blah!” in Mongolian. At last, she gave the ring to Morley and made her promise to honor it and use it in her healing work, as the master shaman himself had used it before her. 

The ring is plain, like a silver mirror the size of a dime. Shamans often wear metal mirrors on their costumes, and use mirrors in their ceremonies as a way to see clearly into the heart of things. Mirrors are also a protection from evil, because if an evil spirit comes along and encounters a mirror, it will see its own terrifying face, and run away. Morley’s been wearing the ring ever since, and considers it a symbol of her commitment to her new work.

I felt we were privileged to be welcomed into the ceremony that night, to see a powerful shaman at work. Most of us westerners are educated to look at things like this with skepticism, but I know a true shaman’s work can have a profound effect on people and deserves my respect. I try to accept what I see at face value, and learn what I can from it.