by Tim Severin
Unlikely though it may have been, Genghis Khan died peacefully. He succumbed to old age, fever and the effects of a heavy fall from his horse while he was out hunting. Although he knew he was very sick he had insisted on continuing with a military campaign in western China, and it was there on 25 August 1227 that he died while directing his army’s operations. Legend recounts that his death was kept a state secret. Business continued to be conducted as usual. Ambassadors and foreign envoys who had come to negotiate with him were made to wait outside the imperial tent, while go-betweens hurried back and forth, pretending to carry messages and answers from the Ruler of the World. And when the visitors had gone and the cortège set out for Mongolia, carrying the corpse of a man his people revered as a god, the journey was made under conditions of absolute secrecy. It is said that Mongol troopers killed every living creature they met so that news should not leak out that the Great Khan was dead.
The Secret History of the Mongols glosses over the details of the death, and says nothing about the burial. But a Persian account relates how Genghis Khan had decreed that no matter where he died, his body was to be taken back to the homeland. There, on the slopes of Burkhan Khaldun, his guardian mountain, he was to be buried at a favourite spot he had known in the days of his youth. No precise details are given about the site, nor is there any description of how the most powerful and wealthiest monarch of his era was laid to rest. According to Carpini, the Mongols preferred to hide the tombs of their great chiefs. They carefully removed the turf, roots and all, before excavating an underground chamber where the dead man was placed, perhaps with a favourite slave. Then the pit was filled in, and the turf put back so that no one would be able to detect the site. Sometimes trees were planted to conceal the exact spot and leave a sacred grove in the dead chief’s memory, or in the open steppe teams of horses were driven over the grave to wipe out any trace of the burial. Carpini said that the burials included ‘a great deal of gold and silver’, and according to another Persian source Genghis Khan’s son and heir the Great Khan Ögodei ordered food to be offered for three days-in succession to the departed soul of his father, and that forty maidens decked out in jewels and fine robes be sacrificed at the site together with choice horses to join the spirit of his ancestor. But all this is hearsay, and the tomb itself has never been found.
Naturally the mystery of Genghis Khan’s burial place has fuelled intense speculation as to where it might be hidden, and whether it would be stuffed with treasure looted by the most successful plunderer in history. Theories abound. For several centuries Genghis Khan’s body was believed to be buried, not in the Hentei, but in Inner Mongolia in the Ordos region. Prjevalski had heard that there was a shrine where the body lay ‘in two coffins, one of silver, the other of wood, placed in a yellow silken tent in the centre of the temple. Here, too, beside the coffin lie the arms of Genghis Khan.’ This tomb has a murky political history. Several times the ‘relics’ have been removed and then returned as the symbols of Mongol nationhood. When the Japanese invaded Manchuria they tried to capture the relics. They had prepared a plan to create a puppet Mongol state centred on the Genghis Khan shrine, and even drew up architectural drawings for a new mausoleum to house them. These plans were never fulfilled, but when the Chinese communist government opened the present building in 1955, observers commented that it bore an uncanny likeness to the Japanese design. And when the celebration of Genghis Khan’s 800th anniversary was so muted in Mongolia, the Chinese communists cleverly gained popular credit with the Mongols by permitting a special pilgrimage to the Ordos shrine. Thirty thousand Mongols went there to pay homage to their great ancestor.
Today most scholars believe that the Ordos shrine contains, at best, Genghis Khan’s weapons. The reason for the mistake, it is claimed, is that when Genghis Khan was buried on the slopes of Burkhan Khaldun, a Mongol tribe was charged with guarding his sepulchre. But the forest grew over the tomb, all trace was lost, and the tribe eventually migrated away to the Ordos, where they continued to claim to be the guardians of the tomb of Genghis Khan.
To try to get at the truth, the Japanese-Mongol Three Rivers Expedition, funded by a major Japanese newspaper, was in the Hentei enthusiastically attacking the problem at enormous expense and with every available gadget of state-of-the-art technology. They had begun their search by scrutinising satellite photographs of all the area around Burkhan Khaldun. Then they had flown a mosaic of aerial surveys, and were now engaged in a painstaking field survey using theodolites and range finders. But they pinned their main hopes on a massive remote-sensing programme, checking the vegetation, soils, rocks and magnetic electrical fields. Teams of Japanese and Mongols were scouring the area with instruments that looked like mine-detectors, or with black boxes of equipment hung round their necks as they peered at dials and listened to headphones clamped on their ears as they fiddled with knobs and switches. If the tomb of Genghis Khan was there, ran the argument, then it was large enough to have disturbed the normal surface pattern. Traditionalists and sceptics countered with the ancient tale that Genghis Khan’s tomb had been buried in the valley floor, and that a river had been diverted to cover it, or even that the site had been flooded to create a lake over the spot. Not to be bamboozled, the Japanese technicians were making precise maps of the lakes and river-beds, and searching for anomalies in the drainage pattern. The Mongolian authorities had allowed the expedition three years for the search; when we found them, they were only just completing the first season.
What the Japanese researchers thought of a troop of very rough-looking Mongols suddenly appearing on the hillcrest and riding down through the camp like a band of brigands, rifles on their shoulders and mounted on shaggy horses, can only be guessed. But our Mongol companions certainly enjoyed the sensation they created. They pulled up their skittish horses, called out loud greetings to Mongol friends who were working with the Japanese, and generally promoted the feeling of being swashbuckling and much too dashing to indulge in the earthbound routine of the humdrum archaeologists. Then, after a glass of hot tea, we were on our way, riding among the yellow and white igloos and leaving behind a crowd of astonished Japanese, among whom I detected a definite envy for the happy-go-lucky way of their brief visitors.
We rode for another hour until we had reached the foot of the mountain. There in a glade among the pine trees we came across what at first sight looked exactly like an Indian tepee.
It was a lean-to of dead branches stacked together to form a tall cone. From the uppermost twigs of the branches fluttered dozens of streamers of cloth, faded from long exposure to wind and rain. Other ribbons and cotton swatches dangled from the branches of several small pine trees which formed a semi-circle around the central wigwam. In front of the semi-circle, about five paces from the ‘wigwam’, a low boulder served as some sort of altar. On it lay offerings of matchboxes, lumps of sugar, brass cartridge cases, coins, and even one or two bank notes. We had come to an obo, or shrine, linked to the sanctity of the mountain. When we arrived, the entire column of riders circled clockwise around the obo to do it reverence. Then we dismounted, tied our horses to the nearby trees, and added our own offerings at the obo. This was done without the slightest trace of self-consciousness. Artists, herdsmen and doctors all found scraps of cloth to tie to the branches of the obo, or searched in their pockets to find small items to place on the altar stone. Observing an historic Mongol tradition, Ariunbold plucked a white hair from the tail of his horse and tied it to the branches. The vet knelt before the rough stone altar and lit a small pile of incense. Others laid down offerings of bread or money. While all this was going on, Dampildorj had produced the lid of a tobacco tin, filled it with smouldering incense and was quietly walking round all the tethered horses. He stopped before each horse and passed the smoking incense beneath its nostrils. ‘It will bring them good fortune and make them healthy,’ he explained. Then, with the same total absence of self-consciousness, all the riders gathered in a group before the obo, stood or sat in
two ranks, and had their photograph taken by Paul as if they were a coachload of trippers who had just toured a foreign cathedral.
It took us three very strenuous hours to climb to the summit of Burkhan Khaldun. The primeval forest of Genghis Khan’s day, with its dense undergrowth where he had hidden from his searching enemies, had been replaced by a much thinner forest of pines, and these had been burned to skeletons by forest fires. Many lay jumbled on the ground, blocking our climb with bone-white tree trunks and sharp broken stubs of branches. To make our progress more difficult, the side of the mountain rose very steeply, and the ground was often loose with sliding rocks and earth. The Mongols did not dismount but urged their little horses up these steep and treacherous slopes. The horses panted and gasped as they scrabbled with their unshod hooves and heaved themselves upwards, the shale clattering down behind them. It was an impressive and athletic performance and I had no doubt that Mongol cavalry had well earned the reputation of being able to surmount any obstacle.
We scrambled out of the zone of burned forest and emerged on the shoulder of the mountain above the tree-line. From there we looked across a vista of ridge after ridge of brown rock extending away to south and west. Every mountain top had been worn smooth by ancient glaciers and planed off so that they were at much the same height, and this gave the illusion that the horizon was impossibly distant. Nearer at hand, along the flank of the mountain, a recent landslip had made a natural dam and was holding back a small lake. The frozen surface of the lake was a patch of dazzling whiteness in the general drab colours of the frigid countryside.
The final mile was ridden over bare rocks and lichens. I could feel even my toughened Mongol horse flinch as its bare hooves struck the raw rock-face riven with deep cracks where the steady alternation of frost and thaw had split the stone into a hexagonal pattern like a great stone honeycomb. We were exposed to the wind, and although only a mild breeze by Mongolian standards, it was bitterly cold. The last 100 feet of the ascent was made on steep shale where the summit of the Holy Mountain rose to its final bald dome. On the crest of the dome we found a strange lunar landscape where small jagged rocks had been set on edge or heaped up in little piles. They were small obos. Dozens and dozens of them covered the head of the mountain where devotees had simply stacked up the loose rocks to form the sacred cairns. On the edge furthest from where we arrived rose an obo much larger and more substantial than the rest. Dead branches had been thrust into crevices of the rocks which formed the cairn, and their twigs stuck out like withered claws. Lodged around the base of the obo were the same offerings we had seen at the wigwam obo - matches, money, cast-off clothing, even a block of Chinese tea. This cairn was called ‘Genghis Khan’s Seat’ and here, according to legend, he came as the young clan-chief to survey his first domain around Burkhan Khaldun.
We installed Gerel’s second bronze plaque. Certainly the stone slab with its metal portrait of Genghis Khan as the mature Ruler of the World was more imposing and spectacular than any previous offering. Ariunbold propped it against the summit of the obo. Then, spontaneously, the entire party - arats, artists, and the expedition volunteers - lined up beside the obo. Every man extended his arms stiffly in front of him, facing the plaque. There was no lama priest to lead the orison, so, haltingly at first but then with increasing certainty and self-confidence, our Mongol companions began to call out ‘Hoooooray! Hooooooray! Hoooooray!’ It was a strange sound to hear on a bleak mountain top in a wilderness in the uttermost heart of Asia. I was to hear the exact same call some weeks later in the National Stadium of Mongolia. Then the chant was to express respect and loyalty to the state. But on the summit of Burkhan Khaldun when I heard it called out against the thin cold wind and in homage to the memory of Genghis Khan, I realised that our journey, which was an exploration for Paul and myself, was something much more to our Mongol companions - it was a pilgrimage.
6 - The Three Manly Sports
Before we left the summit, the scarlet-coated herdsman produced a conch shell from his saddle-bag. The shell was decorated with a streamer and two bright red feathers and must have come from a Buddhist lama temple. But precisely where he had obtained it was a mystery, because the Mongolian lamaseries outside the capital had been destroyed or abandoned for nearly half a century. If official Communist Party propaganda was to be believed, there was no longer any popular religion in the countryside, and the possession of religious relics was frowned on. The herdsman handed the conch shell to his youngest son, the one in purple, and the lad walked in turn to the four corners of the obo, faced outwards, and each time blew the long haunting blasts of the conch call over the distant valleys. In a lamasery it would have been the sound to call the faithful to prayer. On the windswept summit of the Mountain of the Shaman Spirit I knew that we were witnessing a return to the ancestor worship of Genghis Khan. Then we remounted our horses and rode down off the crest.
It was now late in the afternoon, and exuberantly the entire cavalcade clattered downhill to try to reach the camp on the river bluff before dark. As we hurried along the shoulder of the mountain on open ground Paul’s horse put its foot into a hole and stumbled, dislodging Paul in a spectacular flying fall. Half an hour later we were plunging recklessly down the steep slope of the burned-out forest zone, with the horses almost standing on their heads, when I noticed that the ears of my horse seemed to be coming closer to my knees. A moment later my saddle had slid up the animal’s neck and come to a halt just behind its head. I continued onward over its ears and into a bush. When we all assembled at the foot of the mountain, the horse-herders were chuckling and grinning. They had noted our mishaps, and they raised gales of laughter by gleefully miming our individual spills. I promised myself that next time I would bring a crupper strap and use it to hold my saddle firmly in place whenever riding a Mongol horse up and down the mountains. The Mongol saddles were fitted with two girths, fore and aft. The girths were no more than thin straps of plaited horse-hair, and the herdsmen tightened them severely, the rear girth almost disappearing into a fold of the animal’s gut. Western purists would have said that the horses would be injured or at least uncomfortable, but the chunky Mongol horses did not seem to object and their riders knew what was required for the rugged terrain they had to negotiate.
At the foot of Burkhan Khaldun Paul, Bayar and I stayed overnight at the camp of the Three Rivers expedition, while Gerel and the others continued on to our earlier camp on the bluff. We managed to film and photograph members of the Japanese-Mongolian team at work, but it was difficult to judge what progress they were making. The mass of data they were so painstakingly accumulating would be largely unintelligible, I was told, until it had been collated and assessed in Japan the following winter. Meanwhile the field force laboured on, strangely reminiscent, despite their hi-tech gadgetry, of the large-scale archaeological expeditions which in the earlier part of the century searched assiduously for the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs. With forty Mongols and thirty Japanese making up the field team, plus a host of interpreters, handymen, drivers and cooks, there was no spare accommodation for us in the main tents. So Paul and I were invited to share a tent with the Mongol assistants. We passed what was the most comfortable evening of the entire Hentei trip, for we lay like tinned sardines in a row of Mongols and kept warm by body heat.
By riding hard next morning we managed to catch up with the main party before they had left their camp, and reached them just as they were loading their saddles and equipment into the supply truck. It seemed that the majority of the Mongol artistic contingent had had their fill of riding. They were going back to Ulaan Baatar in the truck, and suggested we join them. Paul and I declined, preferring to carry on with the arats who would be taking all our horses back to their communes. We were rewarded with the best riding of the entire trip.
Our falls from horseback seemed to have been rites of passage as far as our herdsmen companions were concerned, and now they were uninhibited about the way we should ride with them. Freed of the l
arger group, the herdsmen set off with us across country at a tearaway stride. Each man led three, four, or even five spare mounts. The rawhide lead rein from the bridle of each animal was loosely knotted around the throat of the horse on its left, and the last animal in line was led right-handed by the rider. In line abreast, he and his group of horses then swept across the scrubland at full speed, swerving around obstacles, swooping through ditches, overtaking one another and being overtaken in a whirlwind of good spirits. We pounded along at this hectic pace for mile after mile, stopping only for the obligatory five-minute tobacco breaks, and then for an hour at midday at the ger of the scarlet-coated herdsman, who said goodbye. The popular reputation of Mongol horses is that they are so tough that no rider can possibly tire them out. This may still be true for their finest horses, well rested and fit from summer feeding. Such animals meant Genghis Khan’s cavalry could make forced marches of 70 or 80 miles a day. But in spring, when still in poor condition after the winter, our mounts reached their limits around 30 miles at their maximum speed. First Dampildorj was forced to stop and change his horse, and then my own mount abruptly slowed to a leaden walk as if someone had unplugged its battery. We pulled up at once, the saddles were removed and placed on remounts, and the tired horse was briskly curried with the long wooden spatulas. Then it was turned loose to follow at its own pace, trotting along like a tired dog following its master home.