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Published: August 20th 2006
Gandan Khiid Monastery
The 25m statue is in this temple and Jen in the background if you look carefully...We decided to take it easy for our last day in Ulaan Bataar as we were both a bit shattered from the bouncy driving and the weather was scorching! After a nice lie in we headed off to see Gandan Khiid, the biggest and most important monastery in Mongolia. Apparently the communists decided not to destroy it along with most of the others as they wanted to keep it as a showcase to impress foreign visitors. The monastery was beautiful but packed with tourists. Inside the main temple there was a very impressive 25m high statue of Janraisig (deity of compassion we think!) made of copper and gilded with gold. The statue was enormous and we heard it contained many precious stones, medicinal herbs and even an entire furnished ger inside the base! The original statue was demolished by the communists in 1937, taken to St Petersburg and melted down to make bullets.
Later that afternoon we decided to go and learn a bit more about Mongolian history and culture at the Mongolian History Museum. The museum was really well done, everything had an English translation and was laid out in chronological order from the stone age to modern day.
They had a wonderful room showing the traditional dresses of the many different ethnic groups in Mongolia which were completely different from each other. The rest of the day was spent relaxing, drinking coffee and hunting down a CD of the current favourite Mongolian singer who we listened to all the time in the jeep and we loved.
That evening Jenny’s eyes started getting really sore, watery and red, probably thanks to the sand blowing about all over the place. Luckily Jen had brought an eye ointment which we applied and hoped would help.
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