O
N A REMOTE grassy
shelf, perched high
above the roiling
marble-green waters
of the Shivreen River
gorge in western Mongolia, I let my
backpack fall to ground before settling
in for a moment of reflection. It is
early summer, 2014, and before me,
casting an evening shadow like a lone
shepherd, stands a tall stone that has
become the site of a kind of annual
personal pilgrimage.
There are no inscriptions to be
found on this anonymous monument,
and neither, to my knowledge, are
there written records of it, but the
chiselled outline and implanted rocks
encircling its base are a giveaway. It is
a type of grave marker broadly known
as a ‘deer stone’. It probably dates back
some 3000 years to the reign of theXiongu people – legendary horseback
nomads against whom the Chinese
built their famed wall, and who, some
historians believe, later became known
as the Huns.D
URING MY three-year horse-
back journey from Mongolia
to Hungary, which began in
2004, I chanced upon many unher-
alded relics such as this, as well
as some of grander design, which
evoked the memory of the myriad
nomad societies that once spanned
the breadth of the Eurasian steppe.
They ranged from the pre-Bronze
Age Scythians more than 2000 years
ago, right through to Genghis Khan’s
13th-century Mongols, who created
the largest contiguous land empire
that the planet has ever seen.
Yet what draws me time and againDESTINATIONS
to this particular stone – now part
of a trekking route I’ve been guiding
since 2009 – is not so much its
archaeological value, but the vista
it overlooks. Here, in Mongolia’s
isolated Altai Mountains, the
continuum of nomad life, so broken
elsewhere by the pressures of the
modern world, carries on.Asia on high. Large parts of
mountainous western Mongolia still
appear untouched by the outside world.TIM COPE spent three
years travelling 10,000km
by horse from Mongolia
to Hungary on the trail of
Genghis Khan. Tim, who
was the 2007 Australian
Geographic Adventurer
of the Year, has since completed an award-
winning film series for ARTE in Europe and
ABC TV in Australia. He has also written a
book, On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic
Journey Through the Land of the Nomads.102 A G
ag0914p102_mongolia - 102 2014-08-12T11:57:59+10:00