For a blog out of Baghdad see Bloghdad. It is unclear who this guy is and how much longer he will be able to post but for the moment it is interesting. Even with cruise missiles whipping around you still got to go out and buy a loaf of bread. I can just hear the wife hollering, “And get a liter of milk too! And don't stop at the tea house on the way back!" I wonder if they are stilll selling lottery tickets.

Back on February 28 (see post below) I consulted a Mongolian fortune teller who told me that the war would start on March 18. Well, the first attack on Baghdad was on the morning of March 19, so this person missed it by a day. But hey, even Mongolian fortune-tellers aren't perfect.

Well, it has finally arrived. No, not the war (of course that has arrived too). I mean Spring. Here in Mongolia Spring officially starts at 9:00 am sharp. It is just a coincidence that this year the spring equinox falls right on the hour. Also, for all of you who tried to balance eggs at the moment of the equinox, forget it. As Sky and Telescope, says, "Eggs do not balance on end more easily at the equinox than at other times! Actual tests have demolished this bit of New Age goofiness; the ability of eggs to balance depends on tiny irregularities on their shells (and the persistence of the would-be balancer!), not on what day it is. This perennial silly-season story has nothing to do with how eggs balance."

At 9:00 am here in Mongolia it is a balmy 24 degrees F. As far as I can tell that has been no reaction whatsoever here about the start of the war in Iraq. This is of course of Buddhist country so the religion factor doesn't much enter into the picture - no one is calling for either Crusades or Jihads - and the local media doesn't seem to be making a big deal out of it. Of course it is still early . . .

From one of our far-flung correspondents, who is apparently trying to make us feel bad about being mired in the frozen wastes of Mongolia: this is the beach in Cornwall, England.

Was I heralding the arrival of Spring a few posts back? This morning it's back down to 20 below 0 F (that's 29 below 0 C for you Europeans who insist on being different). Bad news for the street people, of whom there seems to be more and more of everyday in Ulaan Baatar. Totally destitute people are migrating here from the countryside, which has been experiencing horrific droughts and huge die-offs of livestock. And it probably isn't going to get better. See Extreme Weather on the Rise!

As noted below my Mongolian soothsayer says the war with Iraq will start on March 18. London bookies, who are taking bets on when the war will start, are giving the odds for the war starting the weekend of March 8-9 at 3 to 2. For the following weekend, March 15-16 the odds are 7 to 4. For the whole story see You Can Bet on It: Playing the Odds on War. The odds on Saddam being dead by June 30th are 3 to 2. If you want to place your own bets go Here or Here. Both of these are sports betting sites so it now appears that war is a sport. I am tempted to say that this whole thing is starting to look like a remake of Apocalypse Now but clearly we are moving into new, uncharted territory here.

You may have noticed in the news that blogger.com has been bought out by google.com. If you haven't see Blogger Gets Googled. Apparently now we will all have to start bloogling. Is this progress?

Heard enough of armchair generals, barstool diplomats, pie-eyed pundits, and cut-rate Nostrodamases venting on the war with Iraq? Then read this rant about why everyone should, in the words of the author, "Shut your goddamn pieholes". Having just returned from north China, I think this expression should be modified to "Shut your noodle chutes!" Or for those people in the Alleghany Mountains, “Shut your damn beer drains!"

Well, it looks like George "Hulegu" Bush is going to roll the dice on this Iraq thing. I consulted one of Ulaan Baatar's famous fortune tellers yesterday and this person informed me that the US will invade Iraq on March 18. This person refused to comment on the outcome, but did point out that the ancient city of Baghdad was built in the shape of an enneagon, a figure with nine sides. So what we have here is a struggle between Saddam in his Enneagon and Donald "Rummie" Rumsfeld in his Pentagon. For the connection between the Assassins, who were wiped out by Hulegu in 1256, and enneagons see Here. By the way, it's back down to 15 below 0 F this morning: so much for the imminent arrival of spring.

It's a Heat Wave! (cue up Martha and the Vandellas). It got up to 34 degrees F. (that's 1 degree above 0 for you Europeans) yesterday afternoon. I think this is the first time it has gotten above freezing this year. Women have reappeared from behind their scarves and furs . . . But that does not mean it has not been a bad winter, and it could still get worse: See here for an Update on the fourth-in-a-row catastrophic winter here in Mongolia.

Science Update: See the latest Blow to Darwinism.

Someone asked me what I am reading now . . . At the moment The Gardens of Light by Amin Maalouf. Just finished Maalouf's Samarkand. You might also be interested in The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis. See a Furious Rejoinder to those who have had the gall to compare Hassan Sabbah to Osama bin Laden. More details on these books in a moment . . .

As mentioned below I left Ulaan Baatar on New Year’s Day, Feb. 2 for Xining. The night before, New Year’s Eve, I was invited to a soiree at the apartment of the older woman in the photo below. She is the mother of a friend of mine who is now living in the States.

It’s hard to believe it has been over three weeks since I last posted. Well, I have been traveling, and not always where it was easy to find internet access. I left Ulaan Baatar on Feb 2, which is the day Mongolians celebrate the New Year, according to the Mongol-Tibetan calendar. Not only did I have an compartment on the train to myself, I had a whole car to myself. Not many Mongolian choose to travel on this day, most preferring to stay by the hearth. Of course I was traveling in one of the Luxe cars.

It was a grueling thirty-six hour train ride down to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia, part of China. This included a four hour layover at the border to clear the Mongolian border checkpoint and customs, then Chinese border checkpoint and customs. As usual the Chinese border police were extremely friendly, declaring, “Welcome to China and Happy New Year!” I think these guys must be under orders to put their best foot forward when greeting foreigners. Then of course we had to change the “boogies” on the cars, which means all the cars had to be lifted up on hydraulic jacks and the wheels removed and new wheels place under them, since the tracks in Mongolia are of different width than the tracks in China. This is supposedly a hold over of the Cold War days intended to keep trains from being used for military invasions. Whoever came up with this cockamamie idea of changing the boogies should be horse-whipped. It would be much easier and faster just to get off the Mongolian train at the border and get on a Chinese one.

Anyhow, after interminable delays we were on our way to the city of Hohhot. Just before I left I read in the paper that in Baotou, a big city near Hohhot, a new Wal-Mart-type store had a grand opening with lots of promised bargains. 50,000 people stormed the store on the opening morning and eleven were crushed to death in the resulting frenzy. This makes the Day-After Thanksgiving Shopping Frenzy in American stores look like tea at Tiffanies.

I arrived in Hohhot late on the evening of Feb. 3 and checked into a flea bin near the railroad station. Hohhot itself is a city of a million or so. It was founded by the Mongolian Altan Khan in the mid-sixteenth century, one of the first permanent Mongolian cities to be built after the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty in China. The next morning I went to the Old Town, which is supposedly where the remaining Mongolians in the city now live - the majority are now Han Chinese – to see the Dazhao Temple founded by Altan Khan in 1579. Altan Khan, you will recall, was converted to Buddhism in 1578 by the Tibetan lama Sonam Gyatso. In appreciation Altan Khan gave Sonam Gyatso the title of Dalai Lama, which of course is still in use today, notably by the 14th bearer of this title. Dalai is Mongolian word meaning roughly “oceanic” (there is a Dalai Eej [Oceanic Mother] Grocery Store next to where I live in Ulaan Baatar).They were still celebrating New Year and the air in the courtyard of the temple was heavy with the smoke of firecrackers.


One of the Dazhao Temples

Abudai Khan, who introduced Buddhism to Outer Mongolia, supposedly got the idea for the first Buddhist temple in post-Yuan Dynasty Outer Mongolia (the current country of Mongolia) from this temple here in Hohhot. This first temple in Outer Mongolia, a quite modest affair, Can Still be Seen at Erdene Zuu Monastery near Kharkhorin.

Then I popped across the street to visit the Xilituzhao Temple, built in the 1580s. The blue grazed bricks used in this temple are quite unusual . . .



As soon as I was able to make transportation arrangements I moved on to the city of Xining, in Qinghai province, on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau.

The media is having a field day with this Hulegu and the New Mongols thing. From the Arab outlet Gulf News see Letter from Baghdad: The New Mongols and Suicide on the Walls of Baghdad. The relevant quote here is: "President Saddam did not refer to Bush by name but alluded to him as Hulegu, the Mongol chief who destroyed Baghdad in 1258. His speech was remarkably laden with historical allusions." And everyone thought I was crazy when I compared George Bush to Hulegu . . .