|
Mongolia - the mythical
land
Present-day Mongolia, shut in by the Russian
bear and the Chinese dragon, is only a small part of the Great Mongol Empire of the 13th
and 14th centuries which stretched from the Danube to the Yellow River, the largest
continuous empire in the history of the world.
Of the four million Mongols, only a little more than two
million people live in Mongolia, the rest live in Russia and in China, Inner
Mongolia (an autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China).
The Mongolian People’s Republic or Mongolia, a
sovereign nation, founded in 1921, but emerging only recently from the Soviet Union
influence, is locked between the Great Wall in the south and Lake Baikal in the north
(Siberia’s borders). The country is larger than the United Kingdom, France,
Germany and Italy together.
The horse king country, where snow capped mountains mingle
with the desert. A land of nomadism , Mongols , the shepherds of the wind, the vast sea of
grass of the steppes, the sand dunes of the fabled Gobi Desert. Mongolia, the very name
evokes images of Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde galloping through endless
steppes. nomadic warriors, who inspired an admirable awe.
The epic tales that the Mongol empire reached the West in
the writings of travelers, such as the great Venetian merchant Marco Polo and the
Franciscan monk Guillaume de Rubruck, and still now the Mongol dream feed the western
imagination, where senses are truly challenged.
|
 |
