The Buddha on the Hill

TSETSERLEG, Mongolia - Caleb stares, one hand on his forehead to shield the midday sun, with unusual intensity at the small rocky hill, just above us. Strangely, he ignores the most prominent object in his line of sight, a 20 meter statue of the future Buddha, Maitreya, carved out of white rock. Instead, his eyes scan the rocky crags of the hillside.

"I'll be back," he said, and he goes off into the wilderness to exorcise his demons.

There are many ghosts in this place. In the year 1706, Zanabazar, a Mongolian warlord, picked this spot to build a temple to the Buddhist Goddess Tara. A holy man, Zanabazar studied for many years in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa before returning to his native land and taking up the sword. When the sage died nine years later, his body was mummified in a lotus position and placed in a stumpa, a Buddhist holy relic, on the site. Generations passed, and the monastery prospered. At its peak in the early twentieth century, more than 2,000 monks studied here, making it one of the largest and most powerful monasteries in the country.

Then came a murder. In 1931, Mongolia's new Communist government feared the monastery's power: Tsetserleg and the holy men were said to support anti-government movements. One night, to counteract the perceived threat, the Communists killed the abbot, who was known as the Sixth Zaya Pandita. They also leveled the monastery, leaving only two temples, one of which was turned in a fire station. In the purges that followed, hundreds of former monks were tortured or killed.

But Caleb's nostalgia is from another time. Two years ago, on leave from teaching English in Ulaanbaatar, he and a fellow teacher rode out here, crammed into a battered van with a dozen other Mongolians. They took over half a day to arrive, and when they did, they found the town closed for Tsagaan Sar, the Mongolian New Year. The only open hotel had no heat and only sporadic cold water, hard mattresses and dim lighting. At the first opportunity, they went outside.

They walked to the monastery, past the statue of Maitreya, over the small hill and into the valley below. It was cold, but they walked at a steady pace, descending into a wooded glade. After a of couple hours, frozen perspiration on the edges of their hats, they decided to turn back. By then the sun hung low in the sky, and was about to disappear behind the hills above and end the short winter day. Soon the two hikers were surrounded by darkness, hopelessly lost. They had few supplies, and none of the warm layers of fur the nomads rely on to buttress themselves from the cold nights.

They kept walking. There was no other choice, really, except to lie down and accept a slow death by freezing. Sometime in the night, they heard a noise, the crunching of footsteps in the crusty snow. The footsteps were those of a passing herder, out with his flock of sheep. With customary Mongolian courtesy, he pointed the lost adventurers in the direction of Tsetserleg, and not long afterwards they found themselves back at the dingy hotel, cold, damp, and tired but alive.

Now, back in town for the first time since that night, Caleb runs in the direction of his misfortune. He scampers toward the top of the hill. I watch his progress from the statue's base, as he pauses briefly and then heads down into a col. Just a moment later his appears, the wind snapping his checkered black and white scarf as he lunges from boulder to boulder toward the peak. He reaches the top and then is suddenly out of view.

Sometime later, as I shoot pictures of the town's distant gers and crumbling schools, Caleb returns. He says nothing, but I take his tranquil expression to mean that by returning here, he has made peace with this haunted valley and the chilling time he almost became one of its ghosts.