Blue like the Eternal Blue Sky

In lieu of a longer blog post (coming soon), photos of blue. This fabric, representing the Eternal Blue Sky of Mongolia, is tied most commonly to ovoos, the cairn-like piles of stones on hilltops and sacred spots. It also appears on trees and other things, natural and manmade, considered sacred. It dominates. The other four sacred colours – red for fire, yellow for sun, green for grass and white for milk – also appear. Money and vodka are also left. Shattered glass lies around many ovoos, presumably from bottles knocked over by the often-blowing steppe winds.

Firstly, a tree in a ruined monastery, one of many ruined in 1937 by the communists. The trees only began growing in this area – a nook of rocks in the middle of grassland – after the monk’s death in 1937, so the story goes, and this tree is one of the first.

Secondly, an ovoo, one of many passed in my 10 days of Mongolian countryside.

I love this blue. Never got tired of seeing it. Today, in Ulaanbaatar’s large market, I found it for sale at religious paraphernalia stalls set up among the pots and crockery. I mostly look-but-don’t-buy with religious items, as part of my atheism, but this time I’d gone into the market with the intent of getting some blue fabric. Looove.

(No market pictures yet because I intelligently left my SD card back in the hostel.)