Spirits of Alkhanai Mountain

In the 16th century, a Buryat man gave his beautiful daughter, Balzhin, to a Mongol landlord, against her will. Her new husband’s family gave her a gift of nine tribes of Buryats. Unhappy with the marriage, she escaped and ran from Mongolia. When the pounding army sent to find her by her mother-in-law cornered her among the dense forests of Mount Alkhanai, she cried out “Alhar!” (They are going to kill me!) Atop Mount Alkhanai, one can feel the tremor of her spirit while sitting where she stood.

The outcropping of granite at the summit stands sentinel over a world that few outside eyes have seen. Perching upon the rock of Mount Alkhanai in late spring is like sitting on a small island jutting up from the sea. Instead of waves, this sea features an expanse of green trees that float out into the distance. Larch, birch, fir, and pine form brilliant checkerboard patterns of green, which take on blue hues as they rise up to form mountains, turning turquoise in the distance, where they meet the white clouds.

At 1,662 meters above sea level, Alkhanai is the highest peak in the Aginsk Buryat Autonomous Region. Located in a sparsely populated area three hours south of the trans-Siberian stop Chita, it lies within a few hundred miles of both the Chinese and Mongolian borders. But back in Genghis Khan’s time, it served as the centerpiece of a much wider Buryat area, a land and a people that were subsequently divided between Russia, China, and Mongolia.

Ancient Buryats long ago considered Mount Alkhanai sacred. For luck, Mongol warriors once carried pieces of the broken rock with them into battle. Buryat-Mongol tribes, the indigenous people who populate this area, bring up their children to love and respect the surrounding world. They pass along legends and tales about the Alkhanai mountains, caves, and springs, and teach them to recognize the unity of nature and humanity.

In later times, both shamans and Buddhists considered Alkhanai to be their sacred space. Beginning in the fifteenth century, shamans used the forests of Alkhanai as the site of frenzied ceremonies, featuring banging drums and trances. In the early 1800s, Buddhist lamas took control of the mountain in what present-day Buddhists insist was a non-violent takeover. “The lamas just prayed hard enough,” said a local guide, Achim. “The shamans are pagans, but the lamas have a real religion, Buddhism.”

Five hundred years after Balzhin’s death, on May 15, 1999, the mountain named after her cry became Russia’s 35th national park. It is also the first park in southeastern Zabaikal. According to park director Bair Nimaev, Alkhanai is not only the youngest national park, but the only Russian park to “combine nature and religion.”

The Sacred Mountain

Towering over the Aghyn steppes, Alkhanai National Park blends natural rock monuments with curative springs, waterfalls, and diverse flora and fauna. The 105,255 hectares of protected area contain more than 340 plant species, 180 of which are used in official, Tibetan, and folk medicine.

Different landforms, incompatible in ordinary conditions, thrive together at Alkhanai – including steppe, forests, meadows, lichen, and tundra. Magenta elderberries sparkle against a background of grey volcanic rock, while nature offers up treasures of Altai onions, compact rhubarb and pine nuts.

Visitors most often see chipmunks, rabbits and birds, though bear, elk, lynx, deer and wolves also call the park home.

Mount Alkhanai, an ancient volcano, formed 150-170 million years ago. Vertical splits in the fossil-filled stones provide evidence of the violent convulsions of its formation. Tuff rock, created from the lava of the exploding volcano, lines the slopes and, like the rest of the rock at Alkhanai, it is disintegrating with time. The top of the mountain is unusual in that it forms an almost perfect circle, 34 meters across. A circular path runs around the summit, where Buddhist pilgrims walk their traditional circle round the sun – the rite of goroo.

Alkhanai gained government recognition in 1980, when the mountain summit and a natural rock arch received the status of natural monuments. Locals fought against a planned gold mine on the mountain and, in 1995, scientists of the Zabaikal Center for the Preservation of Biodiversity, organized the first discussion of national park status.

The Buddhist appeal

Northern Buddhists consider Alkhanai to be the world’s fifth most sacred peak, a distinction that drew the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, Danzan Zhamso, to the mountain on July 21, 1991. During his tour, the Dalai Lama sanctified the mountain, increasing its religious appeal. A square monument of eight white steps leading to an altar and a spire, surrounded by green-maned lions, marks the site where his helicopter landed. The Dalai Lama’s intended return in 2002 was stymied, however, when the Russian government refused to grant him a visa, claiming that his visit was politically oriented and would irritate China.

Most Russian Buddhists belong to the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect of Buddhism, led by the Dalai Lama. The state-sponsored atheism of the Soviet era almost crushed Buddhism in Russia, reducing the number of operating Buryat datsans (temples) from over 40 to only two. And yet, in 1978, a British study estimated that one in six Russian Buryats believed in Buddhism. As early as 1984, reports indicated that the number of Buddhists was growing in the former Soviet Union.

Since the Soviet collapse, monks have been able to work and travel freely, establishing contacts overseas and studying the Buddhist canon. The result has been a flowering of interest in Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism. Buryats now account for most of the estimated half million Buddhists in Russia.

Alkhanai’s main stupa (a structure or building which is a symbolic representation of the fully Enlightened mind and the path to Enlightenment), located near the monument to the Dalai Lama, is one of the most popular places for Buddhists to gather for ceremonies in the park. Composed of 53 white rock structures, it is called the central mediator, a symbol of Sumeru, the “world’s mountain.” Oval stones, crossed over each other and covered with white lime, form a munhom, the largest structure – an egg-shaped monument in the center. Wild stones used for ritual fires surround it, placed in the shape of a well.

Here the lamas of Aghyn datsan hold hurals, a rite conducted on the 13th day of the middle summer month, according to the lunar calendar. Villagers gather to watch as the lamas collect the local spirits and offer them burned juniper, pieces of mutton and clarified butter and milk, all poured into the fire. Hodak, silk scarves, quiver on the branches of the trees, symbolizing respect for, and prayers to, the spirits. Lamas simultaneously carry out the rite on the peaks of Punzuk, Chan-Ula and Budulan mountains, intended to pacify spirits in the locality with the force of the Buddhist faith. During prayers, believers fulfill the rite of goroo, walking around the stupa an odd number of times, while praying for their family, wealth, and all residents of the Aghyn steppe.

Following the religious pilgrims

Larisa Rabdanova, a 21-year-old Buryat university student from the village of Urd-Aga, made the pilgrimage to Alkhanai along with her guide, Achim, a recent graduate of the Institute of Natural Resources in Chita.

Pilgrims usually follow one of two primary paths. The first leads to the summit of Alkhanai. The second, by far the most popular, crosses two mountains and then heads back again, taking in a range of holy sites and natural life along the way. Visitors always walk clockwise, in the direction the sun rotates (the direction required of all Buddhists), both in following the loop path and in circling monuments.

At the park entrance, Larisa and Achim met Marie Bolotova, a 50-year-old woman from the neighboring village of Uzon, and her 11-year-old granddaughter. “I have come here every year of my life, for almost half a century,” Bolotova said. “Every year, in late May or early June, the babushkas gather on the mountain along with the old men and the lamas. We pray for the old people as well as for nature.”

Local Buddhists compare the physical path with a human’s spiritual path – a pilgrim stepping onto this trail begins the process of spiritual and physiological cleansing. During the hike, while praying the most powerful mantra of Tibetan Buddhism, Om mani padme hum (“Look for treasure in your heart,” or “Oh, you treasure on the lotus”), visitors pick up a single stone from the trail, which blocks the way of those coming along afterward, and place it to the side. This practice, over many years, has resulted in a wall, about one meter high, lining the sides of much of the path.

The path begins at a wooden bridge, painted green and blue, crossing the gurgling, clear, sacred springs. On the opposite side of the path is the first of four signs: It depends on you, whether your children will be able to see this nature the same way you see it now.

The path ascends through dense forest to the first overlook, where the four pilgrims gaze out at the dividing line, the place where forest suddenly turns into steppe. Along the way, offerings of silver and golden coins, sweets, and sasa (pyramids handmade from sand and clay) dot the trail and hodak, shimmering blue, white and yellow silk prayer ribbons, quiver from tree branches. A second sign advises: Let’s go slowly around this forest and say hello to every flower, but not to cut them, but just see their kind faces and show your own kind face to them.

Dimchik Sume or the Temple of Great Virtue, a damp, moss-covered rock, towers to the left of the route, the first holy stop. Dimchik, the Master and Guard of Mount Alkhanai, reputedly lived here more than 2,000 years ago, and his spirit is believed to reside there still.

“Because Dimchik was left-handed, he made his circles going against the sun. So this is the only rock where you are allowed to circle counterclockwise,” Achim explains.

Continuing on, the four pass the 40-meter-high rock named after the lion-faced Buryat goddess of wisdom, Sendema. Patches of brown moss dotted the rock’s surface, while yellow flowers and green weeds poke out from underneath.

Soon, there is a third sign: The most precious thing about cedar is its long life and the nutritious food it gives to animals, people and birds. The wood is also very precious but it is becoming more rare. Let’s keep it for your descendants.

“Do you want to see a Tibetan prayer stone?” Achim asks Larisa as they crossed over the first mountain.

“Sure.”

Just before crossing a steam, he leads her off onto a smaller path and points out a cracked slab, perched on a pile of rocks and imprinted with six lines of Tibetan text.

“In the time of Namnay (an early Buddhist who declared Alkhanai holy and named each major rock outcropping after a God),” Achim explains, “lamas would read prayers and carve the prayers into rock by order of the lama. They lived in yurts (round, felt-covered tents) around here. This space,” he said, pointing to a circle of rocks nearby, “was where they sacrificed white food. Usually I don’t take people here. I’m too afraid that they will be drunk and want to break this stone or to cart it away.”

The highlight of the six-hour hike is the six-meter-high natural rock arch, Uuden Sume or Temple Gate. Uneven erosion created the arch, though legends attribute it to the magic power of Genghis Khan’s wizards and local shamans.

Lamas consider this arch to be the canal connecting our world with the paradise of Shambala. Local Buryats believe in a connection between the Temple Gate and the island of Olkhon on Lake Baikal. Sacrifices made at the Temple Gate are considered to go directly to the Master of Olkhon Island, a sacred place for the Khor-Buryat tribe.

Four Tibetan letters appear on the walls of the arch, spelling om mani padme hum, along with several human figures, faintly visible, painted with herbs. Here lamas gather on the 25th morning of every summer month to pray.

In 1864, Buddhists placed a wooden stupa under the arch, but it was burned by the Soviets in 1930. A local elderly man says that the government officials who carried out the burning lived short lives. In 1956, after the death of Stalin, a local lama, Zhimba Tsybenov, led a group of monks in placing the current stupa.

The square white rock and concrete base, called sentei, contains sacred books as well as nine precious stones and metals brought from India (gold, silver, coral, turquoise, pearl, steel, copper, lazerite and mother of pearl). Atop it is the bumba, a yellow cupola with a thirteen layer spire (gol). Each layer represents one of the thirteen Buddhist sciences, such as philosophy, logic or astrology. At the tip of the spire is a yellow moon, sun and fire, the soyombo. These represent our life under the sun, the lunar calendar, and the fire of health.

Passing through the arch allows one entrance into the World of Great Virtue. On the other side, Dorzho Pagma comes into view, a rock outcropping named after the diamond princess who was the wife of Dimchik, God of Alkhanai. All of the holy rocks stand between this couple, keeping them apart from one another.

Continuing uphill from the Temple Gate, across the rocky mountain face, the pilgrims approach the Sinner’s Crack. Buddhists believe that after death a person’s soul wanders for 49 days while searching for the calmest place of rest. All of these souls pass by the Sinner’s Crack, a narrow, three-meter passage through rock. Sliding through the passage while visiting Alkhanai is thought to be like squeezing the soul through a wringer, providing an opportunity to prevent certain accidents or an early death, cleaning and purifying the human soul.

A large rock perches precariously above the exit from the passageway. According to local legend, when the worst sinner on Earth climbs though the Sinner’s Crack, the stone hanging over the passage will fall down on him or her. Those who climb safely through the passage have cleansed themselves of sin, though the struggle through it is evidence of the quantity of a person’s transgressions.

It is a tight and claustrophobic wiggle and Achim suggested that Larisa not try it. “Some of the rocks have moved and that top rock is going to fall on someone soon,” he said.

Larisa looked nervous, as if making an important decision.

“I want to do it, but I’m scared,” she said. “I went through a few years ago, so my soul should be cleansed, but I want to have insurance, to protect myself from an early death.”

She finally decides against it, later explaining she was following Achim’s advice.

Larisa did however spend quite a bit of time alone in Mother’s Cave, a small natural grotto where childless women come to ask the Master of the Mountain for a child, making offerings at the alter in the cave, taking a piece of rock from the wall, or collecting curative water. Locals believe that the cave is able to magically influence a woman’s fertility, a relic of a Mother Earth cult that existed long before Buddhism arrived in the region. Traces of this cult have been found in Turkish, Buryat, Mongol and other Central Asian mythologies. The cave is dotted with small shoes, shirts, and blankets, signs of thanks from women who received answers to their prayers for children.

In order to predict the number of children they will have, women reach into a small hole near the cave and pull out a handful of dirt. Each pebble she finds in her hand, among the dirt, represents a future child.

Until the 1930s, lamas lived in and near this cave, taking out the metals the cave contained. In the past, when women removed stones, they sometimes found valuable metals as well.

“Once, a 60 or 70-year-old woman came to this cave to give thanks,” Achim said. “Her children were all grown and gone. People laughed at her. How could she have more kids? Shortly afterwards, a 15-year-old came and asked her for a place to live.”

The last rock structure on the circuit is Nara Hazhid or Rock of the Sky Musician.

“People have claimed to have heard rock music here, even famous Russian pop groups, but I’ve never heard it,” Achim says.

Achim climbs up the narrow, rock steps in a black crevice swarming with gnats, while birds made a hollow tapping noise in the distance. Larisa waits below.

“I can feel the pressure between the rocks,” she said.

Achim claimed that cosmic energy comes from this black hole, though a small window to the sky at the top brought back the perspective of the real world, lost in the buzzing blackness. Larisa said she did not want to get caught in that unnatural space.

They cross back over the mountains. In the still of the woods, where the rustling of leaves and the twitter of birds call out, they come across a small wooden home, partitioned in two and falling into the ground. It is the former House of Pilgrims.

They walk up the rotting wooden steps into the corridor dividing the two parts of the house. Bottles and incense rest on a far bench, along with a roll of birchbark, an old lamp, newspaper, and an old calendar. A photo of a Tibetan stone hangs on the wall.

Larisa slowly pushes the wooden handle of the door to her right, as if she were an intruder, and emerges into a small, square room, thick with buzzing flies and the stale smell of incense. A white brick stove, blackened with soot, stands in one corner, covered with old mugs and tin cans, a glass baby-food jar filled with melted wax, and a small plastic bag of tea, tied with a white thread.

Across from the stove, two simple wooden benches sit in front of an altar bearing the bottom of a plastic bottle, filled with sand and a square of chocolate, a friendship bracelet, grains of wheat, a clay Buddha figure, candles, large ivory sheets of paper forming the Buddhist Mandala, silk paintings and a pile of old curling, black and white photos, mostly of lamas.

The signs of the lamas, living and dead, who had been here were so evident. Yet at that moment, it seemed to Larisa as though she had come across a secret world. The silence pressed around her, squeezing the house and her within it.

After descending the mountain, many people relax at the tourist center, then return to the frigid and limpid stream, Sukhoi Ubzhogoye, to bathe in the water. It contains many minerals and has antiseptic qualities. Locals believe it possesses curative powers. Signs, such as “eyes,” “heart,” and “stomach,” are staggered along the stream, indicating the best spots to treat certain illnesses.

On summer weekends, the road between the springs and the campground hosts a steady traffic of people. Some carry bottles to fill with the sacred water. Others who have come to relax lurch with inebriation, clutching their companions and swaggering along the road. “We drank yesterday and we’re drinking today,” one local government employee, vacationing at Alkhanai said. “What else is there to do?”

Visitors summon all their strength to submerge themselves in the bathing areas, wrapping their arms around the wooden gutters which line it. The water is painfully cold and visitors take pride in how long they can stand the frigid waters. A group of high school students compares notes: some lasted just five seconds, while others held out for “almost a minute.” Bairma Yumova, a 28-year-old teacher from the village of Aginskoye, lasted two minutes. It was an impressive to the high school students, but not to her male relatives. One family member stayed in for 13 minutes, while her husband was the proud champion at 22 minutes. Not wanting to give up any chance at better health during the long winter ahead, the family was set to return the next day to bathe again.

A fine balancing act

In the three years that Alkhanai has been a national park, tourism has expanded rapidly. The largest number of visitors in a single day has increased from 2,500 in 2001 to 4,000 in 2002. Up to 40,000 visitors come to Alkhanai each summer season.

Park officials, locals, and government administrators feel a dual pressure. On the one hand, the region actively seeks to promote tourism, and passed a law in 2001 to that effect. Like much of Chita oblast, the area was entirely closed to foreigners until just over a decade ago, and even since then, foreign visitors have only trickled in.

Tsyrendorzhee Damdinov, vice-chair of the Regional Duma, explained the economic impact of tourism to other administrators, “Every ruble that goes into a restaurant is the pay of the restaurant workers; it buys more meat from vendors, and has a filtering down effect.”

Yet community leaders worry about the impact of tourists on the Alkhanai ecosystem. They consider the park sacred and are not willing to sacrifice nature in exchange for revenue. “We shouldn’t establish this park just so that everyone comes and has fun, but to preserve nature …” said Bato Dorzhiev, head of administration for Duldurga district. “There is no need to launch this national park, to attract many, many people, because it will destroy nature. It’s a sacred place for all Buryats and Buddhists. We should have that foremost in our minds.”

The increase in tourists brings some increase in revenue, but the 20-ruble entrance fee (120 for foreigners), only covers half the costs. The park administration has little flexibility to raise rates, for local Buddhists consider it sinful to charge more than a nominal admission fee to a holy area.

Still, funds are needed to combat some of the negative effects of tourism. As Park Director Nimaev noted, “We feel the pressure of people on every hectare of territory.” From the exposed and weakened tree roots caused by too many people traversing the paths, to the risk of forest fires from campfires, to the litter of campers’ garbage and cigarette butts, and the noise and drunkenness that disrupt those seeking rest in nature or a religious experience, park officials have their hands full.

The worrisome changes have forced management to take active measures to preserve the ecosystem. Just this year, the park forbade camping near the mineral water springs, moving the camping sites out to a designated area. They are considering constructing wooden walkways, or even a modern hotel near the entrance of the park, far from the springs.

Meanwhile, Alkhanai’s appeal has surprised local villagers. Dondok Tysmpilov, a wizened, 53-year-old farmer, is a year-round park guard from the village of Alkhanai. He helped to construct the first road to the mountain in 1987 and 1988. Before that, people came by foot, horseback, carriage, or drove Zhigulis off-road.

“Our local kolkhoz did everything – constructed the road, cleared the land, and prepared the site,” he said. “When we were building it, we were doing it only for ourselves, to make this place accessible to the local people. We had no idea that it would bring people from all over the region and even international visitors. Even the Dalai Lama came across our road in 1991. I went with him, up the mountains to the holy sites and I have three pictures of me with him,” he stated proudly, smiling at the recollection.

. ,

Back up at the summit, one can imagine the Dalai Lama standing here. Images appear from across the centuries: bands of warlords and conquerors, various tribes, and men on horseback who kidnapped their brides. All ride through with deafening yells, yet are awed into silence by the holy mountain. Perhaps many rode freely across these hills. But it is hard not to imagine that some were trapped by the dense growth, leaving behind their spirits, which even today call out through the wind.  RL