A tourist in my own town

I'm a great tourist when I'm somewhere for a short time.  Perhaps even too good - Andy and I must have walked close to 10 miles our first day in Seoul last fall, and were wiped out - but it's easy to make an effort to dig into a place and experience it when you know your time is limited.  Not so much when I'm living somewhere.  It's so easy to put things off, since you live there, you could do that anytime... except you don't, and then you leave, never having seen half of the key sights of your own city.  Our last 7 years in DC being a case in point.  Anyway, since our grand plans for a camping adventure over Labor Day weekend were thwarted by a nice fever/general yuckiness bug, we thought a short in-town excursion would be more our speed.     We took the bus just down the road (literally - it's less than 1.5 miles from our house) to the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khan. 

The Bogd Khan was both a religious and political leader in Mongolia.  I think he was the #3 position in Tibetan Buddhism.  Interestingly, for many years the new Bogd Khan reincarnation was picked from Tibet and sent to Mongolia, while the Dalai Lama came from Mongolia and was sent down to Tibet.  A bit of divide-and-conquer to make sure that religious leader could never muster up too much home-grown political support.    The temple complex dates back to the 19th century, and his palace from around the turn of the century.  The temple is pretty much like every Buddist temple I've seen in Mongolia, filled with much of the same Buddhist art.  I can appreciate the artistry, but I find it hard to warm to endless images of skull-headed demons and serene Buddhas. 

The Winter Palace itself, however, is really interesting.  It looks just like Peter the Great's Summer Palace in St. Petersburg, which makes sense since it was designed by architects from Tsarist Russia.  Apparently, the Chinese put up a fuss that this big Buddhist leader would be living in such a Western building, so they added lotus flowers and some Buddhist symbols up on the roof.  I don't think it really did much. 

Winter Palace - Ulaanbaatar

Summer Palace - St. Petersburg

The Bogd Khan spent more than 20 winters in this palace, and they have a lot of his and his wife's personal effects.  I learned that one of his ministers bought him an elephant from St. Petersburg.  They took the elephant "part of the way" to Mongolia on the train, and then "walked another 8 months to get to Ulaanbaatar."  Poor elephant.  He managed to live awhile in Mongolia, though died not long after the Bogd Khan did in 1924 from what sounds like total neglect.  He had his own set of Buddhist regalia for ceremonies.  And actually, for a Buddhist leader, there are a lot of dead animals represented in the house.  One of the most famous things inside is a ger covered in leopard skins.  That's quite the gift to give to a person who believes in reincarnation.  "Here, I bought you an entire house covered in animal skins!"    There are also two rooms full of the creepiest stuffed animals I've ever seen.  The case of shellacked fish alone could cause nightmares for days. 

A perfect tourist excursion - some culture, history, religion, art, and dead animals.  All in less than 2 hours.  We'll see if we do better this winter being tourists, since we know it's our last one here....