We toured Ulaan Baatar and visited Buddhist temples and museums. Mongolia's
main religion is yellow Buddhism, or Lamaism, the same Buddhist sect that
is practised in Tibet but not in China. A Mongol Khan bestowed the first
title of "Dalai Lama" on a Tibetan monk. Mongolia has much closer
religious and cultural ties to Tibet than anywhere else. In the museums
we learned about the heydey of Mongol history during the 13th and 14th
centuries, when Ghengis Khan (pronounced Chinggis with a "ch"
sound and khan pronounced "han") and a few generations of his
offspring conquered more land than anyone else; the Mongol empire stretched
from Eastern Europe to the Pacific shores of China. |