The next morning I got up and went down to the resturant where they were serving fried dough and coffee for breakfast. This is almost like a donut but with no hole and is eaten with butter and jelly. It was not a bad concept. Paul said the Russians eat this with sour cream.

After breakfast we got all our stuff into jeeps and headed west. We were going to see the ruins of Kara Korum which were made into the Erdene Zuu Monestary. This has been a center for Buddhist activity for more then a thousand years. The city of Kara Korum was the launching pad for Chinggis Kahn's Campaigns in the thirteenth century. The palace where the great Kahn lived had silver fountains with jeweled lion and snake heads where wine, beer and mead poured out of. His empire stretched as far as Moscow and Turkey in its day. His empire was the largest continuous land empire in recorded history and its scope has never been matched. Kara Korum was later destroyed by invading Manchurian armies after the capitol was removed to Beijing in the days of Kubla Kahn, one of the grandchildren of Chinggis Kahn.

Years after Kara Korum was destroyed one of Chinggis Kahn's sons, with the help of some monks, used the rocks and rubble that was left of the city and built the Erdene Zuu Monastery. When they were finished there were seventy temples and shrines in closed within its walls. It was the first and also the largest Buddhist monestary in Mongolia. Each side of the monestary measures about a quarter of a mile.

We got to the fortress like structure after a several hour drive drive. I was amazed by it's massive front gate and the walls that surrounded it with a hundred and eight stupas strung around it. A stupa is the place where an esteemed monk's ashes are put after cremation.

We had come to see the three temples that weren't destroyed by the communists, built in a mixture of Chinese, Manchurian and Tibetan style of architecture. We were met by a middle aged woman with graying hair who would give us a tour of the holy site. She did not speak English so Baskar had to interpret. We walked over to the first temple and the guide got out her ring of keys and unlocked the padlock on the front door. It was emphisized that we were to enter the temple with our right foot and then once inside proceed around in a clockwise direction. Once this was established she began to tell us about the temple, it's meaning and everything about it.

One of Three Temples



The first temple represented the childhood of Buddha. Inside there was a large gilded and painted Buddha made of clay. It was about eight feet tall. She explained that only the head and hands were exposed. Clothing covered the rest of the statue's body.