Gareth Jones
[bas relief by Oleh Lesiuk]
HOME |
Stop Press |
Complete Soviet Articles & Background Information |
Précis of Gareth's
|
All Published Articles |
BOOKS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TOPICAL
'Are you Listening NYT?' U.N. Speech - Nov 2009 |
Gareth Recognised at Cambridge - Nov 2009 |
Reporter and the Genocide - Rome, March 2009 |
Order of Freedom Award -Nov 2008 |
Premiere of 'The Living' Documentary Kyiv - Nov 2008 |
Gareth Jones 'Famine' Diaries - Chicago 2008 |
Aberystwyth Memorial Plaque 2006 |
GENERAL
Scholarship Fund |
Site Map |
Links |
Legal Notices |
Sponsored Links |
Contact |
|
We said goodbye to Plessen and off we went at 5.30 a.m. in the morning, when the sun was shining over the palace and hundreds of swallows flying round it. Our destination was a lama’s town and temple called Beidzemiao where the second most important Living Buddha in Outer Mongolia was staying. There was an early morning haze over Mongolia. The sentry at the gate was snoozing and another sang a Mongolian song reading it from Mongolian writing. A woman was squatting on the floor arranging a silver headdress. Priests squatted facing the sun. A boy with crooked legs strolled about. We passed a Japanese hospital, which had increased in size over the last three months, and then by four long, low buildings and three gasoline tanks built on ground close by where the Japanese planes land. The Mongols dread the aeroplanes and have fantastic legends about them, because the Japanese once took a skeleton away for research. Even the camels are terrified by the shadows of the planes. The Mongols are frightened of the Japanese; they said there was no snow last winter, because of their presence. We drove over uncharted land. No map contains the features of the roads or rivers. Perhaps the Japanese have military ones. The roads were terrible, just ruts here and there. We very nearly bumped the roof every other minute. The lorry-car nearly tumbled over. It was like being in a tank during the war. We went on for hours and hours. How we stuck it I don’t know and how the car kept together I also do not know. We had to go the long way round the Sacred Mountain, as we crossed the southern fringe of the GOBI DESERT. (Did you think a year ago that I would be crossing part of the Gobi Desert?) It was very sandy and the scent from the wild thyme
was beautiful. Fine birds and eagles
circled in the sky and antelopes crossed our path. Skeletons of cattle lay strewn on the wayside.
There was a sudden descent in the track and
we could see ridges and plains stretching for
miles. There were very few yurts to be
seen and eventually we came to some temples where we grinned at a solitary
Tibetan monk |
Gareth at the Lama service. |
|
|
|