2022.10.09. Visiting a Buddhist monastery

For today, I was planning on staying home with my husband (since he needs to rest) and doing some work but mostly chilling. Not what happened.

We got up super late and decided to just have lunch instead of breakfast since it was noon anyway. Right after lunch, I got a message from a girl doing her internship here, inviting us for a walk to a nearby monastery. Since my husband can’t (and shouldn’t) really walk a lot, we agreed that he would stay at home and chill and I would go to the monastery with this intern.

While waiting for her on the street, a random Mongolian guy came up to me to ask where I was from (I am not even surprised at this point, people usually seem interested when they see a white person), and when I told him I came from Hungary, he got excited to tell me he’d been to Balaton and Budapest, and – in broken English – he started telling me about Hungary and Mongolia having some shared history; which I’d known about, naturally, but I was surprised to see he also had some knowledge on the topic. He then grabbed my hand and said it was nice to meet me, at which point the intern girl also arrived and the Mongolian guy started to ask for money – at first I didn’t even understand what he was getting at, as he seemed normally-dressed and he even spoke some English and just in general didn’t seem like a beggar (he even had two packs of ramen in his hand). I wouldn’t even have minded giving him some money, but I genuinely don’t have cash on me, only my cards – and when I go shopping or know that I’ll need a taxi, my husband’s card and some local cash, obviously. But today was a walking-day. So we said goodbye to the guy and set off for the monastery.

The walk there was about half an hour, right by a busy and very uninviting street of nothing special, but it was worth it for the monastery. There were quite a few buildings, and although there were no leaflets or maps, so we didn’t really know which building served what purpose, we strolled around, went into every building that had its door open, and stared in awe at the huge statue (Google tells me in Megjid Janraisig Datsan) and the hundreds of smaller statues and prayer wheels surrounding it. There was also a wedding party and a photographer taking pictures of them in front of the temple. Walking around the monastery and its buildings, taking a look at all the happenings there (like some kind of an assembly in a grand centre and a Buddhist retreat being held in another building) took almost two hours, after which we walked back (another half an hour, at least) on a different rout, which led us through a street of yurts (or gers, as they are called here) – true, you can’t really see them bc of the high fences surrounding each tiny parcel, but you can peek in sometimes to glimpse the gers; just don’t get too scared when the dogs start barking at you, sensing you are near their territories. It was really interesting though, this whole experience.

A ger inside the monastery, with some prayer wheels in front

The tallest statue indoors, according to Google

Prayer wheels spinning - praying

A thousand Buddha statues surrounding the big statue

At the assembly hall

One of the entrances (or exits) to the monastery, with mountains looming in the distance

Prayer wheels with a statue in the background

Some gers in the ger-suburb next to the monastery.

At this point I feel like the city itself isn’t very glamorous or eye-pleasing but there are parts that are certainly interesting. It’s not like Budapest where you can walk for half an hour and only see beautiful sights and interesting buildings and be swept off your feet. Obviously, BP has uglier and nastier parts too, but the middle is just picture-perfect, kinda. Here, it feels like you need to walk through busy streets of awful traffic and crumbly buildings in order to get to something beautiful or something interesting, even though the city itself is probably much smaller than Budapest – wherever you are, you can see the mountains surrounding you and that’s about where the city ends; in BP, you cannot see the ends of the city, and not just bc most of it is really flat.

Not saying BP is perfect and Ulaanbaatar is subpar – there are certainly quite a few things that we’ve already grown to like here. Hailing a taxi is quick and taxi fares are ridiculously cheap (and so are bus tickets, or so I’m told), there are good restaurants that aren’t super expensive, there are interesting buildings (we’d never been to Asia before so anything Asian or Buddhist is new and exciting to us), the people here seem nice and helpful most of the time (like that Law teacher giving us a ride to Songdo yesterday or people pointing things out or the Mongolian guy helping us hail a taxi after our grocery haul at Emart), and the view from our apartment is just wonderful – the sky paints so many shades of blue and orange and pink every evening and when the weather is clear during the day, the view of the mountains is amazing. Also, all buildings are well-heated which is a huge upside for me, always freezing in the winter back at home.

To be fair, I’ll probably be freezing here too when I go outside since it’s already almost as cold as it gets in Hungary and we’re still in the beginning of October, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Btw it’s really interesting how it smells like autumn (fallen leaves have a very distinct autumn-smell to me) and the clear blue sky with the bright sunlight also has true autumn vibes but it’s too cold for autumn and it was even snowing yesterday – it’s like getting both seasons at the same time. Bit crazy, if you ask me, but not saying I don’t like it. Although I do miss that nice two-weak period when everything is orange and the weather is just perfect for denim jackets and warm vests.