Journey of a Lifetime

We were brought from the airport (see pic on Blog) directly to Lam Rim Monastery in Ulaan Baator, where my lama - Panchen Otrul Rinpoche - was given a mighty welcome with conches blowing, yellow hats, parasols and crowds of monks and lay people. I didn't move fast enough to get behind him and so ended up squashed to death in the good-natured crowd trying to get into the temple. Luckily I had Rinpoche's bag with me so I held it in front of me like a relic and kept saying "ootch la reh (phonetic 'excuse me' in Mongolian) Rinpoche bag" and they kept squeezing me through the press of bodies until I was literally spat out into the temple. Rinpoche was sitting up on a high throne and saw me ejected from the crowd and burst out laughing. I was laughing too. Apparently he told his monks to go find me but I got there first. Now in the first photo here you see us having lunch in a ger - Mongolian tent, do not call it a yurt which is a Russian word, they are a proud people and now free from Russia - with Rinpoche in the place of honour. As his attendant, I am always placed near him. How cool is that? Honestly, I keep pinching myself to be sure this is real. The second picture shows a ger from the outside. This is a traditional Mongolian home, easy to pack up and move on a wagon or horse or camel or yak. Sadly the nomadic herders have been coming in thousands to the city as the bad winters (tsud) have been killing their livestock. These shanty towns or ger cities lack basic amenities like electricity and water, schools, hospitals etc My lama's charity ASRAL ("care" in Mongolian) strives to help these people, especially the children, with hot meals, clothes, health clinics, educational programmes and so on. I am proud to be assisting him in this work. (Photo credit: Ueli Minder)

OMIGOD OUTER MONGOLIA!

I meant to post about my trip earlier than this but I was in the last stages of final proofs for my new book out at the end of the year. (See below.) Also was using spare time to take Mongolian language lessons online thanks to youtube (they work, I'm gabbing away here and people can actually understand what I'm saying!). Also viewed videos and read books. So quick headlines: I am travelling as the attendant of a high Tibetan lama (see www.jampaling.org) who comes every year to Mongolia to oversee his monasteries and his charities (ASRAL, an NGO). I am also taking notes, of course, for my next book which will be a work of non-fiction about this lama and my travels with him to India and Outer Mongolia (Inner Mongolia is ruled by the Chinese, while Outer Mongolia is free and independent now that the Russians have scarpered). I can hardly describe my experiences, they are so overwhelming. I feel at times as if I am in the middle of a National Geographic adventure documentary. I keep thinking "is this really me here, sitting at this table to the right of the lama in a ger [Mongolian tent] surrounded by Chinghis Khan's people all smiling away at me?" I have to say - and this is the truth - it feels strangely like home!

The Secret History of the Mongol Queens

I read this book by Jack Weatherford a while back as part of my preparations for an upcoming trip to Outer Mongolia (more about that anon). It's an amazing if at times horrific tale, i.e. what happened to the subsequent generations of women after they lost power. But Genghis Khan's love and respect for his daughters is astonishing to read - he put them in charge of all of his territories while he kept his sons by his side for battle - not least because we are not told this by other writers in the field. You would think there were no Mongolian women, never mind Mongolian queens, if you go by John Man's version of Mongolian history in his supposedly definitive Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection. Sadly and annoyingly, Man [have to laugh at the symbolic name] is simply carrying on the male tradition of excluding women from historical records. Weatherford describes in his interview how large chunks of The Secret Life of the Mongols - the 13th century record of Genghis Khan's life - were removed by later Chinese historians, those chunks being specifically about Genghis Khan's daughters and how he honoured them. The other thing I love about this interview is the author himself. What a lovely man - intelligent, erudite, humble, respectful of the Mongolian people and their language, culture, and history, and so indignant on behalf of the women who have been cut. And it's a great read, by the way, as exciting as a novel though harrowing at times.

Castle Rock

Here is a pic I took a few years back when hiking in the Mountains of Mourne (well worth all their mention in songs and poems!). You can see that even if castles or giants didn't exist, fantasy writers would have no problem inventing them with such natural inspiration. These are perfect for any stone fortress, witch's lair, eagle's eyrie, Seige Perilous, Westernesse outpost ... you get my meaning. Are we really surprised at the kind of mythic fiction that comes out of these Celtic isles?

Tristram Shandy

Right, if anyone else out there is reading this daft and ingenious book, do get in touch. There are so many incredible things about it, including this black page to denote grief. Laurence Sterne broke all the rules of the novel long before James Joyce did and yet people went on writing in the conventional standard mode as if he and his marvel of a book never existed. Of course he was born in Ireland, of Anglo-Irish stock, but the English have claimed him, the way Americans are always claiming notable Canadians. (Harrumph.) It takes ages to read. Over a month later, I'm not even a third in. There was an entire legal section in Latin to wade through, not to mention the hundreds of minute digressions he takes as he tells his story. He is supposedly telling the tale of his life but a good chunk of the way in I am still at his conception. (Every time I am about to give up on the book he says something outrageous or hilarious. No prudery of the Victorians here!)I have dipped in and out as well, so came across more astonishing breaks with form, e.g. he writes about Mrs Wadham and decides his readers can fill in her characteristics themselves. So there are several blank pages with chapter numbers on top. Oh and very early in the book he says something in a huff and tells you to leave if you don't like it and then does something like this ________________ shut the door _______________ to put you out, ha ha. The book was published in 1759 and was all the rage by 1760, so his society did appreciate it. He was quite famous, after being a poor parson. But it seems the following generations haven't recognised or valued his ground-breaking originality, which is strange given the cult of James Joyce's Ulysses. I only know two people who have read Tristram Shandy and they are both librarians.

The Singing Stone in Lego

Ach, I love my readers. Look what I just found by sheer accident. The Singing Stone adapted for lego. Hilarious. And yes I am posting this at some godawful hour of the morning. It has been a looooonnnnnnng day.