And now the Baikal pictures.

First shot of Baikal through the trees by the beach.

Me at the end of the pier near our Turbaza (Tourist Compound, a lot of these have been built since the end of the USSR). This is actually not Baikal proper but a large bay (near the town of Kamensk if you have a map), and thus the land you see running along the horizon there is the edge of said bay. Even so, the immensity of the place was easily felt.

Sunset on our first night there.

Mist, the next day, from the end of the pier.

Viktor and I decided to pick a direction and see how long we could go along the lake shoreline before lunch. This is as far as we got north where a small river was emptying into Baikal (off the left side of the picture). This picture is looking up the river back inland towards the small bridge over the river and the train going over that bridge.

The start of sunset the next day. I took a whole lot of pictures of this sunset, but I'll try to keep it down to a few here.

Later, looking down the pier. I don't know the people fishing at the end, but I didn't seem to bother them, and I like having them in the picture.

Later still.

Back up the pier, my host-family. This picture came out strange making it look lighter than it actually was.

Sunday and a sailboat.

That's it for now. I have a good many more pictures from Russia, but these are the ones I decided would be most interesting for the largest number of people. Chances are good that I will be going back to Buriatiia in the next few years at some point, but I don't dare ask you to stay tuned for that long. I hope you enjoyed the show.

As promised, even if late, here are those last sets of pictures. This batch is from July 6th-9th when my host family and I took a trip to the border town of Kyakhta. Also, I should mention that I wrote the commentary for these a few weeks ago, while I was actually still in Russia. If the comments read strangely, that's probably why.

Kyakhta is south of Ulan-Ude, and on the way we passed Ivolginsk (home of Ivolginskii Datsan) again. This is a shot of the steppe and Ivolginsk from the road. If you look really really close, in the middle of the picture is a sort of yellowish building (at the time it looked very shiny and golden but that didn't coem out). That would be the main datsan temple.

This is apparently a shamanists' monument to Genghis Khan. It was composed of a circle of wooden posts (the yellow and blue ones in the background here), larger carved wooden posts in the middle, and a rock with something in Tibetan painted on it. There were also lots of insects. In the far background here is Guisinskoe Ozero (Goose Lake, I think). Much like Baikal (though smaller of course), Guisinskoe is long and thin. At the north end (unless I got turned around) is the town of Guisinoozersk. Once the home of a large datsan complex, the home of Agvan Dorjiev, Guisinoozersk is now an industrial dystopia.

View to the Southeast (the northwest is just as small), including the town's Orthodox church. No datsans in this town. Based on my totally unscientific observations, it looked like there was a much higher proportion of Russians here than in Ulan-Ude.

Me at the Mongolian border-crossing point. Behind the fences is Mongolia. That mist that looks like an ocean back there is actually more steppe. There was a sign indicating that this was in fact the border crossing, but it was attached to a guard post, and I didn't want to ruffle anyone's feathers.

Inside the Kyakhta Kraevedecheskii Muzeii (Regional-studies Museum). This museum was quite impressive, even more so for being on the very edge of Russia. It is worth noting though that the largest museum I've thus far seen (in Buriatiia, Moscow's a different story) is the Buriatiia Natural History Museum, considering that the first protests allowed by Gorbechev were environmentally themed.

Lenin, in bright silver paint. Behind the trees is what's left of the town's old church. For what this church looked like in life, see the small sculpture in the forground of the picture from the museum.

Cottages and satellite dishes. I thought the contrast there was neat. There were also some cows wandering around, but I couldn't get them in the picture.

As you can see, it has been quite some time since my last post. I have tried several times between now and the last round to upload pictures, only to fail each time due to various problems. As a result, I'll be waiting to upload the remaining pictures (and there are a good many of them) until I'm safely back in the USA, or Germany if I get bored enough and manage to find an internet cafe.

Check back here in a week or two.

If you're just now seeing the new pictures from this round of uploads, Hi. I would recommend starting here. If you're new to the blog in general, well, the start is not too many clicks back from that link.

July 2nd: Two more Datsans, and that should be all of the religious buildings for at least a week.


First, the Zhenskii (Women's) Datsan. This is the only place I've thus far seen women Lamas. Most of the faithful I've seen so far have been women, however, along with all of the people working in the souvenier shops. This picture is quite squarely in the middle of a residential/governmental area. I was hoping to capture the urban feel of the place with this picture. As usual, indoors picture-taking was not allowed, and the complex was very very small (though again with construction continuing), so this is the only picture I got of the place this time.

LamRim Temple. I have no idea what LamRim means exactly (generally probably something to do with Lamas and a guy named Rim). This temple is right in the commercial district (tsentr). If you're wondering where exactly it is, look for the red roofing behind the fence. The people standing near the car in the foreground are my host family, again Lev Egorovich, but also Viktor L'vovich and Valeriia Sergeyevna. Off to the right down the street is a shopping mall and a monument to... something about a struggle and Communism. *shrug*

View from the inner courtyard of LamRim. Aside from being the most popular temple I've visited in terms of number of visitors, probably due to its location, LamRim had another phenomenon I had yet to see or even hear about. Apparently Mahayana Buddhism allows for a sort of "confessional." In the basement (don't worry, well lit, clean, and ventillated), was a room lined with what I must call, for lack of a technical term, confession booths where one
could sit and recieve blessings, advice, and (I think) absolution from one of the resident lamas. I didn't try it myself, but a good many other people did.

That's all for now. More to come before long, I'm sure. This week is a trip to Kyakhta, that is a town down by the Mongolian border.

Oh, and before I forget, HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

Last night I burned through an internet timecard, but today I've got a fresh one, so hopefully I can finish everything before I fall asleep.

July 1st:

The Rinpoche-Bagsha Buddhist Society/Center/Obshchestvo is technically not a Datsan proper as it's not a training ground for monks. However, it's awesome for other reasons. I have another picture of it, with me in it, but my eyes are shut. If you reeeeaaally want to see it, just ask, but don't expect to see it here.

Me off to the side of the RinpocheBagsha and in front of some lumber (most of the Datsans I've visited have some sort of ongoing construction of multiple buildings) and a view of the Selenge River Valley, underneath an onrushing thunderstorm. It rarely rains here, being the northeast corner of Central Asia and all, but when the storms do come, it's breathtaking.

Facing away from the Datsan. In the distance is Ulan-Ude. We'll get closer in a bit. The random guy walking in the middle of the picture is my host father, Lev Egorovich. For anyone vaguely interested in questions of Buriat culture, it is possible (so everyone here says) to differentiate between West and East Buriats based on their name/patronymic. West (Irkutsk or "Erkhuud") Buriats tend to have more Russified names, like Lev Egorovich. East (Chita/Aga) Buriats favor more "Buriat" names (for example, my teacher Tsimzhid Badmapayevna). This split also lines up with the Christian/Shamanist vs. Buddhist/Shamanist West/East split. Anyway, on with the show.

Ulan-Ude (somewhere in there is the Ud' river valley) and a Soyombo in front of the RinpocheBagsha. (by the way, Bagsha means teacher)

To the (East?) of the Rinpoche. In the background is the grass/farmland (steppe?) past the Selenge river valley. I should really post a map at some point to plot out where all of these things are. Anyhow, if you look closely in the distance, there's an oddly-shaped hill with what looks like a sheer vertical slope carved out of it. On that side, so I'm told, are petroglyphs from the Hun era. We drove past it on the way to Ivolginskii Datsan, which should then be somewhere out there, probably to the right.

Some of RinpocheBagsha's stupas and Ulan-Ude's industrial district... as much as a former Soviet city can have a seperate industrial district. Again, the Ud' should be between buildings in there.

The Selenge River proper. These pictures don't capture the true splendor of the view from this hilltop. That should be it for landscapes for a while. Taking pictures inside the Datsan was forbidden (though you could get around that forbiddance for a fee apparently), so I didn't get any shots this time. I felt this Datsan had the best presentation, both internally and externally. In the souvenier shop here they were also selling the same chess set from before for about half the price.

June 29th:

Last Thursday I came into posession of a ticket for the opening ceremonies of "Altargana 2006." (Yes, I did do some editing on this picture. I made it smaller and cut out a large swath of empty stadium. The entire stadium was packed by the time the parade described below started.) Altargana is apparently an annual festival that started in the mid 1990s and brings together Buriats from all over Russia, as well as Mongolia and China. I don't know who started it, but this year was the Buriat Republic's turn to host the festivities. Events (only accessable to those with connections, I mean tickets. I'm still confused as to how I got one.) have been ongoing all week. Displays of traditional dances, competitions in music, wrestling, archery, and horseback riding, as well as meetings of Buriat dignitaries and academics have been displayed prominently on the news. At any rate, the opening ceremonies started with an exhortation from...

...the main stage! As seems to be normal for anything public in the former Soviet Union, the stadium had a VIP section and then space for everyone else. The stage was oriented such that the Elite must have had a fantastic view while the rest of us couldn't really see much of what was going on. After the exhortation and welcoming started a parade of Buriat delegations of varying sizes from places as distant as Saint Petersburg, Yakutia, and Inner Mongolia.

I now have a much better answer to Dr. Colton's question of whether there's a foriegn policy element to the status of Buriats in Russia. Simply, yes. Also, it's wildly different than what John Whitmore found among the Finnic peoples. Here, the Russian state appears to be totally in control and seeking to court it's Far East neighbors. Mongolia also had a sizeable delegation, and the flags of all three countries were hoisted at an equal height on those flagpoles just to the left of the Chinese flag. I have a picture of that too, but for the sake of saving internet time, I'll not post it. The sign reads Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia of the Chinese People's Republic.

Irkutsk and Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan had three people show up, none in traditional dress. It's interesting to see who dresses in what and how that compares with impressions of their region. For example, regions with stereotypes of racial mixture and Russification came in Western-style pants and shirts with only the elderly in traditional dress. A few of those elderly were even in Russian Old-Believer attire.

...however, the Khorin Buriats of Kizhinginskii Raion were in full dress, even their children. They went so far as to bust out sub-regional banners with the sub-regions' names in Classical Mongolian script (not used officially since the 1930s). For example, the one on the far left reads in Cyrillic Buriat "Sagaan" (meaning white. clever eh?). However, the old style writing
very clearly (sorry, I'm getting pompous) reads "Segegen." The difference between these names could be (I think) reasonably compared to the difference between Eboracorum and York or Londinium and London.

Anywho, Khorinskii Raion proper was also the only region to have a Lama in their ranks. Here, he's the guy in the red robe on the left, right arm bare, and in the yellow hat. (As a side note, the Dalai Lama's sect of Mahayana Buddhism is known as Gelugpa, which means something fancy in Tibetan, or alternatively simply as "Yellow Hat.") I have more pictures from the parade, but these are the most interesting. The only other one I would feel worthy of mention was of the Ust-Orda delegation, who came even though their region is slated for absorption into Irkutskaya Oblast' in the next few years. Also, this is where my camera ran out of batteries. Thankfully, this is also after anything really worth photographing ended.

After the marching, various officials ranging from Governor Popatov (a Russian who spent part of his childhood in a Buriat village and therefore speaks great Buriat. also a Communist), to emissaries from Mongolia and China gave longwinded speaches. Valeria Sergeyevna (my host mother) watched things from home and said this is where TV coverage ended. Next was a series of traditional, I guess, dances framed by a sort of ethno-techno fusion soundtrack. The dances then turned into a representation of the "ethnogenesis" of the Buriat people, featuring an attack by a large smoke-belching black dragon. No one I talked to had any clue who the Dragon was supposed to represent, and the next day's TV-recap didn't clarify. In the end, the dragon was rebuffed by the brave Buriat people. We left shortly thereafter, around the same time the Eveneks from the northern end of the Buriat Republic did. Judging by the ensuing fireworks, we had already seen everything by then.

So much for keeping the text on this blog to a minimum eh?

June 25th:

Inside the Ivolginskii Datsan complex, about an hour's drive east of Ulan-Ude (don't ask me distances here, metric and I don't mix). Apparently, in modern usage a "Datsan" is not just a Temple/Lama-academy, it's now the whole set of building and residences around it. This used to just be one temple. Apparently the local faithful have been busy.

Lama signalling the start of the next round of prayers. I got to sit in and watch. It didn't make me want to convert or anything, but it was still fantastic to see in life what I'd only read (and tried to write) about before. Ivolginskii Datsan has a long and very intriguing history (I'll spare you the details today). To clarify why it's important in a short form, Ivolginskii is regarded as the center of Buddhism in all of the former Soviet Union, due to its designation as such by the KGB once upon a time. Note, this does not include Mongolia, China, or India, all of which have vastly more important (Mahayana) Buddhist centers, or any of Southeast Asia which is loaded with significant Theravada Buddhist locations.

Me in front of the main temple of the Datsan complex. If for some strange reason you've ever seen a picture of Ivolginsk before, this was probably where it was taken. Again, seeing something in life which you've only before seen in pictures is quite an experience. On the way out I picked up a neat portable, if impractical, chess set. I have since come to experience firsthand the awesome fury of Russian chess-training.

Apparently, I've totaly lost the ability to name posts on this blog. Anyhow, on to the pictures: Starting with last Saturday (June 24th):

Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of Trans-Baikal. Gers/Yurts, an Old-Believer Church and more stuff behind those trees dealing with the Huns (Yeah, THOSE Huns. They got around.), Eveneks, and others. The Eveneks had a festival of sorts later on. We left when they started singing what we were certain was a Mexican soccer fight-song.

Small Datsan between the Museum and the city. I love the clouds here.

Same Datsan, with Prayer Flags.

Small Stupa (I'm told these all hold Buddha-relics. Either these are relics from different Buddhas or Shakyamuni was one big dude). In order to reduce the liklihood of losing (and therefore having to re-do) uploads, I'm breaking this into a few seperate posts. Hopefully I'll remember to link this one from the last one. Also hopefuly I'll not goof up the formatting like I just did here.

I'm having a great time here, but the pictures upload interface isn't cooperating tonight, and I need to get to bed. I've been a lot of places since the last post and have lots of pictures to share. I'll try again to upload them later this week.

Hello from Siberia! I promised you all pictures, and this is the page where I"ll be posting them. If you can get past the Wall of Text below, you'll find them scattered across the rest of the page.

Sometime last week, Ulan-Ude celebrated its 340th birthday. It's amazing to think that even this city is older than my country. I haven't got any pictures yet of the 340th-birthday advertisements, but I'll try to soon. I named the post after the anniversery because, well, I don't know, it's the first thing that popped into my head (ignore that, apparently I managed to delete the post title. oh well.). The blog gets its name from a song most Americans will know (especially Floridians). It's something of a joke for me since Ulan-Ude is in Siberia (the Godforsaken frozen north in the minds of most people), but is in reality way down near the southern edge of the Russian Federation. In fact we're just a 5-dollar bus ride from the Mongolian border. The URL comes from the very old name for Ulan-Ude, meaning "High up on the river Ude." The new name is supposed to mean "The Red River Ude," recalling the blood of many Communists spilled here during the Russian Civil War. It could, if you fudge the translation and etymology, also mean "Red Gate," like the gate to the Communist East... or something. Ulan-Ude actually sits on the conflux of the two rivers. I might add here that uploading pictures on dial-up from Siberia is a blast. This blog was made to be brief and I've already violated that plan enough, so on with the show:

Me in front of the Buriat Republic... government building? I don't know what exactly it's called, but it's got the President, Narodnii Khural (Parliament) and Constitutional Court all in one. The Russian-language plaque is on the other side of the door. Apparently just off to the right is also the Speaker of Parliament. Maybe next time I should get my picture with him.

In front of me is the Buriat National Theater. Behind me is a fountain and a state-owned lumber enterprise (I think). Apparently I look like a local. Also, I'm not grinning like I want to in any of these pictures because frequent broad smiling in public is said to be a big neon sign that someone is an American.

Me in front of the "Monument to Buriatia" or some such thing. Viktor (my host, who took most of these pictures) jokingly refered to her as "The Iron Maiden." The dish-and-cloth combination in her hands is a traditional gesture of respectful greeting in Mongolian cultures. There's a painting floating around out there that features Sukhe-Baator and Lenin's first meeting. Sukhe-Baator has the above getup, and Lenin is wearing a Western-style suit and extending his hand to shake that of his counterpart. Both guys in that painting look kind of confused as to what to do next. Honestly, I'm not sure that they ever did meet, and even if they did that it went down that way.

I like to take landscape pictures. You'll probably be sick of them by the end of my stay here. Way down the road on the right is an Orthodox Church. There are a bunch of datsans around town too, including one not too far from where I live. There's also a Catholic and an Old Believer church nearby. I'll take pictures of those soon too. The hills in this one remind me a great deal of Eastern Tennessee.

Me and the Mongolian Consulate. The wind wasn't cooperating, so the flag isn't fully billowing, but I think it's clear enough. In the future, I'll try to take pictures that don't feature me so prominently.

I was wrong, I did get a picture of a 340th-birthday advert (blue thing on the left). But then, my guess would be that no one is looking at it here. This is indeed the world's largest Head of Lenin. This picture doesn't do it justice. The thing is Massive. I don't remember who, but someone once called it grotesque. They were right.

More to come later, this place is amazing.