A tour in Mongolia

The fascination of the unknown, a deep love of the picturesque, and inherent desire to revert awhile to the primitive--these were probably some of the factors that made a little...

I shall always associate Kalgan with waiting for things to happen. Rumours of war were constantly coming to one’s ears, news of camel caravans on the point of starting for Mongo...

Although I never found Kalgan lacking in interest and amusement, I began to feel at the end of a week there that my prospects for setting out for Mongolia did not seem to improv...

The countryside at this point, some seventy miles north-west of the Great Wall, begins to lose its cultivated aspect and to develop into great stretches of undulating prairie as...

It would be unkind to recommend any sensitive person to make a first experiment in camping out among such a friendly, but inquisitive crew as the natives hereabouts, and I could...

The people in the neighbourhood of Ta-Bol were quite a friendly lot, and I was frequently invited to go and have a chat in the various yourts. To persuade one inside and therefo...

So greatly had I enjoyed my experiences of travel in Inner Mongolia, that it was in a sanguine frame of mind I returned to Peking to engage in the pleasant task of making my pre...

Our real difficulties had, however, barely begun, and it was upon arrival at the Hotel Siberie at Verkne-Oudinsk that we felt completely at sea in the absence of one word of a c...

The sheer discomfort of our crowded tarantass could not quench the glorious optimism with which on the last day of June we sallied forth on the highway to Urga. Our driver, thou...

The wisdom of an early start soon became apparent when we were obliged literally to cut our way through forest undergrowth for hours on end. Starting with a steep climb, we had...

Our proximity to Urga became now apparent in the increasing traffic over the prairie. From the hill-side on which we halted at breakfast time we watched the life of the plains--...

Our very first ride took us right into--what any Mongol other than a lama would, I am sure, describe as--the heart of Urga. At the foot of the hill upon which the holy city, K’u...

Whereas in Inner Mongolia I did not see the Chakhars in sufficient numbers to enable me to form even an impression upon which to base a generalisation as to typical characterist...

Our visit to Urga had been most fortunately timed, and we were delighted to hear within a few days of reaching the capital that the great semi-religious, semi-athletic festival...

Among all the brightness and sparkle of life in Urga, there is alas! a very dark and sinister side. Day after day, we rode past a certain little inconspicuous enclosure surround...

The Mongol belief in an immediate re-incarnation leads them to be entirely careless of their dead, and the only description of tomb I saw in Urga were a couple of dagobas erecte...

Again we had reckoned without our--Mongols. Rising betimes and being from an early hour in a state of preparedness, we sat down and waited for the appearance of our tarantass, o...

The antiquity of our tarantass was a source of constant anxiety to us, and minor mishaps, ropes wearing out, shafts slipping, and nuts becoming loose, were of frequent occurrenc...