Fig. 6. Mongol lamas
In BERGMAN'S and BEXELL's tent we were as crowded as sardines — nine Swedes, two Danes and one Chinese. It had certainly never happened before that so many Swedes were accommodated in a single tent in Mongolia. It seemed like a Swedish invasion in CHINGGHIS KiAN's old country.
VISIT TO BATU-KHALAGH-SUME
On the night of November 9th one felt the approach of real winter. The minimum temperature was —19.2 ° C. At length we received an invitation to come and see the temple-grounds, as the lamas had heard that I was a good friend of the TASHI LAMA. JOLROS LAMA, the gegen who had received HASLUND and Hum' MEL so kindly on the occasion of the Maydar festival in 1927, had been dead for a year; and those now in power at the monastery were inhospitable to strangers. At the main entrance we were surrounded by a crowd of bare-headed monks in red togas and conducted into a large temple-hall with elegantly painted walls and numerous red-lacquered columns at close intervals. Everything was new, and the colours were therefore rather glaring. The prelate who showed us round was an indescribably ugly old lama, suspicious, churlish and fat; and it was but grudg-
IIIF Color HighRes
