By far the largest, highest, and most hallowed of Ulaan Baatar's four holy mountains is Bogd Khan Uul. While the other three holy mountains were worshipped chiefly by the inhabitants of separate quarters of the city Bogd Khan Uul was venerated by all. The entire massif, extending some twenty miles east to west and up to ten miles north to south, dominates the southern skyline of the city. Tsetsee Gun Peak, which according to maps and reference materials is the top of the massif, reaches an elevation of 7,377 feet, almost 3000 feet above the city, but oddly enough, as I will elaborate upon below, this is in fact not the highest point of Bogd Khan Uul. Almost the entire massif is heavily mantled with larch and cedar forests which constitute the southern edge of the latitudinal tree line in this part of Mongolia; beyond here steppe-covered ridges eventually grade into the Gobi Desert.

This mountain has an interesting history. It may be the world's oldest wildlife refuge and national park; it is certainly one of the first. A number of books, pamphlets, and tourist ephemera about Ulaan Baatar claim, without citation, that the great Mongol khans of the thirteen-century first declared the whole mountain a sacred preserve where no hunting was allowed. I have done extensive research on this era and have never been able to find a direct source for this assertion. There is no mention of such a preserve, for example, in the seminal thirteenth-century Secret History of the Mongols nor in any of the thirteenth-century Persian histories of Mongolia.

Although the story of a thirteenth century nature preserve centered around the mountain may be apocryphal, we do know that starting in the 1700s the Bogdo Gegens of Mongolia, who eventually settled here at what is now Ulaan Baatar, began to make twice-a-year offerings on the mountain and that by then prohibitions against hunting and tree felling were codified and enforced and enforced on a local level.

Apparently the mountain was first known as Khan Uul. This name was supposedly based on a legend that Chingis Khan had been born at its foot. This is certainly apocryphal, since all thirteenth-century sources agree that Chingis was born in the watershed of the Onon River. It's true, however that In 1225 Chingis, after his triumphant seven-year campaign against the Moslem empire of Khwarizm, returned to Mongolia and set up his headquarters near the base of the mountain, perhaps, as mentioned earlier, even building a stone palac here. Perhaps this legend is an echo of the fact that Chingis once lived here. In 1778, Buddhist officials nevertheless submitted to the Manchu Emperor in Beijing (at that time the Manchus enjoyed suzerainty over Mongolia) a petition reiterating this legend and noting that for several generations Bogd Gegens had been making offerings to the mountain. In the petition the Mongolians sought permission to declare a civil holiday in honor of the mountain and asked that Manchu Court itself make offers to the mountain on this day. The Chinese quite rightly did not believe this legend but they did not want to offend the Mongolians either The reply to the petition read "The veneration of Khaan uula is a worth thing. Therefore . . . the appropriate ministry is empowered to send incense, candles, and silk stuffs in the ordained amount, in the spring and autumn of each year with instructions to Sanji Dorji [a Mongol representative of the Manchu government in Urga] that he make offerings in the presence of the wangs, kungs, and dzasaks [Mongolian officials and dignitaries]." Apparently the name Bogd (Holy) Khan Uul dates from this time. The exact dates of the twice-yearly offerings were to be determined by Mongolian astrologers. These offerings continued in one form or another until the communist era, when ovoo worship was outlawed, although they might well have continued clandestinely.
Other customs applied to Bodg Khaan Uul. For instance, criminals could not be executed within view of the mountain. Those condemned to death were taken to some other city to meet their fate. This ban may have originated because the Bogd Gegen lived in the city, at the base of the mountain, and executions were considered unseemly in his presence. The injunction was in effect as late the 1890s, when two Mongols were convicted of slaughtering an entire family of seven Russians. When the Manchu government ordered that they be executed in city lamas made strenuous objections. Finally a compromise was reached. The condemned men were taken to a narrow gorge five miles outside of the city where high cliffs blocked off view of either the city or Bodg Khan Uul and here they met their fates.

Whatever may have been Bogdo Khan Uul's status in the past it is now officially designated a Strictly Protected Area, one of several classifications of parks and preserves in Mongolia. Within the protected area, which covers over 103,000 acres, hunting, tree-felling, pasturing animals, and permanent residence is forbidden. The mountain remains a popular destination for day-hikers, both Mongolians and foreigners, although a permit is supposedly required even for day use.

Of course laws in Mongolia, as elsewhere, are not always obeyed. In 1999 a lengthy article in the Mongol Messenger revealed that rangers who patrol the preserve had requested tear gas and electric prods for use in protecting themselves against illegal trespassers. In early July of 1999 a ranger-one of twenty-one patrolling the preserve, was badly beaten when he tried to stop people from carrying away trees they had cut down. "Some of these people have a well-maintained retail network [for firewood] and would stop at nothing to acquire merchandise-this forces rangers to take the line of least resistance for fear of being stabbed to death," said T. Tserendovdon, aged 35, whose wife is also a ranger. Subsequent inspections by groups of rangers revealed that at least 35 households had moved onto preserve land, grazing livestock, growing vegetables, and even maintaining greenhouses. Unfortunately there was no money available for either tear gas or electric prods. The remedy which no doubt would have first come to mind in the United States-firearms-was apparently not considered.

The first time I considered climbing to the summit of Bodg Khan Uul I was warned off most forcefully by a knowledgeable local resident who claimed that several small bands of escapees from the men's penitentiary, located at the base of the mountain just above Zaisan village, behind the War Memorial, were hiding out on Bogd Khan Uul and surviving by robbing hikers and others. They had not actually hurt anyone so far but I was assured that I did not want to encounter these people.

A year later they had been rounded up, supposedly, and I was told it was once again safe to go on the mountain. There are several routes to the summit, but from the north side the easiest starts near the Khureltogoot Astronomical Observatory, about seven miles east of the downtown. Just across the bridge over the Tuul River bridge the observatory complex of several buildings can be seen on the hillside to the right, partially hidden in the forest at the edge of the tree line (Here the tree line indicates how far down the mountain the forest extends, and not how far up; the valley of the Tuul and the lower slopes of the mountain are covered with steppe.) Just to the right of the observatory a deep valley runs several miles directly south, ending at the steep slopes leading directly to the twin knobs of what I had been told by my friend the taxi cab driver Dashpurev was Tsetsee Gun Peak.

From the observatory I followed the crest of the ridge east of the valley. Soon I was into a forest primeval of large, mature larch and cedar. Clearly no illegal timber-felling was taking place on this part of the mountain. A fox skittered across my path, and I saw several beds used by izubr, an large Asiatic elk. Farther on I carefully plied my way across several large boulder fields before emerging on the main ridge line of the massif. Due west could be seen a high point topped by dramatic granite tors. These were the knobs which had been pointed out to me by my cab driver from the road. Wending my way upward through house-sized granite blocks I soon emerged into a tennis court-sized flat area surrounded on all sides by thirty-to-forty foot-high tors. Scrambled up the side of one for an unobstructed view I could clearly see that I was on the top of the Bodg Khan massif.

Nature could not have conspired better to create a setting more conducive to the worship of a mountain. The flat area at the summit surrounded on all sides by soaring tors gave the immediate impression of a large altar, and standing there I could not help but feel I had entered a sacred precinct. Indeed, in the middle of the flat area was an large ovoo draped with khadags and Tibetan prayer flags and surrounded by moldering bricks of tea which had been left as offerings, as well of dozens of empty vodka and beer bottles left by more profane worshippers. On a flat rock near the ovoo I laid out a line of incense made from konan artz (a kind of dwarf juniper) which I had gotten from the monks at Ganden Monastery and lit it. There was no wind whatsoever and the aromatic smoke hung in a thin layer about the ovoo.

After a suitable period of reflection I took out the map I had brought along. Tsetsee Gun Uul, the alleged summit of the mountain with an elevation of 2256 meter (7,377) was clearly marked by a small triangle. I immediately noticed however, that about a mile to the east there was a point that according to the typographical contour lines was clearly higher. I took a GPS reading and discovered that I was standing almost exactly at longitude E107º, the location of the highest point on the map, and not at the point indicated as Tsetsee Gun Uul. I strolled over to this latter point and discovered a pyramid-shaped metal marker and a bronze plaque giving the elevation as 2256 meters. The ridgeline here is almost perfectly flat, and any point for several hundred yards in any direction probably had the same elevation. Yet looking back east I could clearly see that the point surmounted by the tors was at the very least a hundred feet higher. I have never been able to confirm this, but I have often wondered whether the topographers, not wishing to profane the true summit of the Bogd Khan Uul massif, purposely designated a lower point as Tsetsee Gun Uul. I might point out that there is no ovoo at this lower point.

I returned to the tors and camped that night on a grassy bench just below the flat altar area. I had originally planned spend the night on the summit, but I had a vague feeling of unease about this: it would have been like sneaking into a church and sleeping on the pews. That night was the summer solstice—I had purposely planned to be on the summit of Bogd Khan Uul on the longest day of the year—and the next morning in the pre-dawn I went up to the altar area to view the sunrise and contemplate further on Bodg Khan Uul.

Did Chingis himself, I could not help but wonder, ever himself stand here at the summit of Bogd Khan Uul? Chingis, we know, revered high mountains, whose summits brought him closer to the Eternal Blue Heaven worshipped by Mongolians. Before the start of his campaign against the Chin Dynasty of China he climbed to the top of Burkhan Khaldun Mountain, near where earlier he had escaped with his life from pursuing Merkit tribesmen, and for three days and three nights prayed for guidance and assistance from the ancient gods of Mongolia. In 1219, before starting his campaign against the Moslem empire of Khwarizm he again "climbed to the top of a hill, bared his head, raised his face . . . and prayed to Heaven for three days." In 1126, a year after arriving at his camp at the edge of the Black Forest, Chingis left with his armies on the campaign against the Tanguts of northwestern China. Did he climb here to the summit of Bogd Khan Uul and, as was the custom, hang his belt around his neck and bare his head, make offerings of airag (mare's milk) and then fast for three days while supplicating Heaven for success in his upcoming campaign? It he did there must have been a special poignancy to his entreaties, since by then Chingis was an aging man, in his mid-sixties, and indeed he did not return alive from the Tangut campaign, dying in China a year later in 1227.

Whatever role Bogd Khan Uul played in the ancient animist religion of the Chingisids, it was later among the Buddhists that the mountain took on the aura of sanctity which continues on down to the present day. Among the many Buddhist places of worship found in Ulaan Baatar (then known to foreigners, although not to Mongolians, as Urga) during the pre-communist era there was one known as the Shara Temple. It was quite active in 1892, when it was visited and described by the Russian ethnologist and linguist A. M. Pozdneev. Each autumn lamas held ceremonies in the temple honoring Bogdo Khan Uul while other lamas presented offerings on the summit of the mountain itself, presumably the summit where I greeted the dawn. The Shara Temple was subsequently destroyed by the communists, and now no one I talked to has a clue as to where it might have been. The Shara Temple was dedicated to Padmasambhava (Sanskrit for "the Lotus-born"), one of the principal founders of Tibetan Buddhism, which eventually spread to Mongolia. Born in Kashmir in the eighth century, he studied various Tantric teachings before undertaking a mission to Tibet, then under the sway of shamans and followers of the Bon religion. In Tibet he became famous for his subjugation of demons and indigenous nature spirits who ruled the countryside. In Tibet of these entities were "converted" to Buddhism and incorporated into the Buddhist pantheon. This same process took place in Mongolia. All four of Sacred Mountains I have mentioned were thought to have been ruled originally by spiritual entities whose influence on human beings was often malignant. One of the duties of Buddhism was to destroy or at least suborn these entities. After the reintroduction of Tibetan Buddhism into Mongolia in the sixteenth century by the Tüsheet Khan Abutai (it has enjoyed a brief florescence in the court of the great Mongol khans of the thirteenth century, but had largely disappeared after the dissolution of Mongol Empire), a similar campaign was launched against the chthonic spirits of Mongolia, which hitherto had been the sole concern of shamans. The third Dalai Lama of Tibet was directly involved in this endeavor, apparently with the sanction of the Manchu government, which in an attempt to establish a state religion "aimed at easing the differences between Mongolian folk beliefs and those of officially sanctioned Buddhism." in the words of one study In order to objectify these spirits they were identified with a specific image from the Buddhist canon which eventually came to serve as a kind of demonifuge. In the case of Bodg Khan Uul Garuda the Devourer was chosen. Originally Garuda was a entity from the Hindu pantheon, half man and half vulture, which feasted on snakes, the archtypical chthonic creatures. Tibetan Buddhist later fastened on this image because of its similarity with the mythical Himalayan bird known as the khyung which was associated with the air, or the heavens above. "With his heavenly associations and his sworn enmity to the evil forces of the earth, Garuda appealed to Mongolian Buddhists, whose own native shamanism honored the sky above all. . . ," notes one commentator. During the performance of tsam, the ceremonial dances which once played a key role in the liturgical life of Mongolian (and Tibetan) Buddhists, especially in Urga, Garuda appeared as a masked figure, one of the Lords of the Four Mountains, representing Bogd Khan Uul and serving as a kind of demonifuge. An incredibly elaborate nineteenth century tsam mask of Garuda nows resides in the Choigin Lama museum in Ulaan Baatar, where I had seen it earlier.

I reluctantly left my mountain-top aerie. Rather than retracing my route I decided to descent via the southern side of the mountain. I returned to the Tsetsee Gun Uul marker then headed due south, clambering down some steep rock faces before emerging into thick woods. There is very little water on Bogd Khan Uul-none on the route by which I had ascended the mountain-and I had brought only two liters along, the last of which I used for tea in the morning. The temperature climbed into the eighties and parched as I was I was overjoyed when I stumbled upon a small wash basin-sized spring with water bubbling up out of a rock crevice. I consider myself a connoisseur of drinking water, and this was excellent-soft, with no mineral taste, and bitingly cold, straight from the bowels of Bogdo Uul Khan. Of course I was not the only sentient being to frequent this spot. Izubr (Asiatic elk) had trampled the banks of the tiny rivulet just below the spring, and on a small patch of mud on the edge of the pool was imprinted a perfect four-inch long track of a wolf.

Eventually I emerged at Mandshir Monastery, a thriving establishment in the pre-communist era but later almost completely destroyed. It has been partly rebuilt and one temple nows serves as a museum. The scenic environs, well wooded and watered, are very popular with Mongolian day-trippers and party animals and I had no trouble hitching a ride back to town.

As I mentioned Bogd Khan Uul once fell under the purview of the Shara Temple, which was destroyed back in the 30s. Now the lamas at one of the temples at Gandan Monastery have reinstituted rituals honoring the mountain. These usually take place in June, at various easily accessible locations at the base of the mountains, and are of course open to the public. Thus Bogd Khan Uul's traditional role as the main Holy Mountain of Ulaan Baatar has been restored.