Entrance to Gandantegchinlen Monastery

For our first outing in Mongolia, we headed into Ulaanbaatar to the Gandantegchinlen Monastery – Gandan for short. In 1990 (Mongolian Revolution, marking the start of the end of socialism in Mongolia) the monastery was restored and revitalized, when the restrictions on worship were lifted. We learned that Mongolia has strong ties with Tibet, and that the 13th Dalai Lama even stayed at Gandan in 1904.

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