Mongolia | Ja Lama | Life and Death of Dambijantsan

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Turkey | Nusaybin | Church of St. Jacob | School of Nisibis

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The largely Kurdish city of Nusaybin is located twenty-four miles south of Midyat , on the southern edge of the mountainous plateau known as  Tur Abdin , which is Syriac for “The Mountain of the Servants of God”. It is right on the Turkish-Syrian border. Just across the border is the Syrian city of Qamishli.  The city of Nusaybin in Turkey, top, and the Syrian city of Qamishli, bottom (the border is shown in yellow). The two cities are separated by a No-Man’s Land (click on photos for enlargements).  The No-Man’s Land separating Nusaybin and Qamishli We stopped for tea on a square facing the main border crossing between the two cities. According to locals this square would usually be jammed with day-traders coming over from Qamishli to buy and sell goods. The crossing is now closed because of the civil war in Syria and the cafes lining the square host only old men nodding over cups of coffee. Reportedly the city of Al Hasakah forty-five miles to the southwest is now at ...
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Turkey | Mardin | Deyrulzafaran Monastery

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Deyrulzafaran Monastery is located about three and half miles from downtown Mardin. Every travel agent in town offers a stop at the monastery on one their tours of the local sites, but there does not seem to be any public transportation. A taxi costs 25 lira ($11.77), which seemed rather exorbitant. I tried to bargain the price down to 20 lira with several different taxi drivers but to no avail. The last one got a bit huffy and unleashed a barrage of Turkish at me that didn’t seem all that friendly. So I decided to walk. If I can’t walk three and a half miles in an hour it is time to hang up my walking cane. At ten on the morning it was still fairly cool and the walk out of town went quickly. I soon arrived at the turnoff to the monastery at the village of Eskikale. From here it about a mile to the monastery through sparsely vegetated hills inhabited by flocks of sheep and the occasional horse and frolicking colt.   Outside of the monastery were half a dozen big tour buses, dozen o...
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Mongolia | Zavkhan Aimag | Otgon Tenger Uul

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Wandered out 534 miles to Uliastai, capital of Zavkhan Aimag, and then took a van 20 miles east ATCF to the well-known children’s camp located to the west of the Otgon Tenger Massif. Here we hired horses and two horsemen for a circumnavigation of 13,192-foot Otgon Tenger Mountain, one of the sacred mountains of Mongolia officially recognised by the Mongolian government. I had already done an eighty mile circumnavigation, or khora, of Burkhan Khaldun and climbed to the summit of Bogd Khan Uul, just south of Ulaanbaatar, two other officially recognised sacred mountains. From the Children's Camp we crossed the Bodgyn Gol, which begins on the western flanks of Otgon Tenger, and headed northeast up the Rashaan Gol. Locals say they had been experiencing a drought and that there had been no significant rains for several weeks, but only a few hours into our trip we experienced a torrential downpour. We popped into a ger for tea and waited for this to pass and then continued on to the hot ...
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