The Bogd Khan

I say!

Some Kalimbuka news first of all. I have had to place Kha'bahje on 'gardening leave' - ironic in itself, as he is our gardener in the first place - however, I didn't want to actually dismiss him after so many years of loyal service, so instead have placed him on semi-long-term leave, and sent him back to his village, near Mangochi. I don't want to go into too much detail about the reasons, but suffice to say that it involved a young girl (well, it's hard to tell how young, actually, and I certainly didn't want to look too closely), and a latin term. Anyway, we can't have that sort of thing around here.

Fortunately, I have already found a replacement, and he's a very sturdy chap indeed. Name's Wilson - apparently named after Harold Wilson (Baron Wilson of Rievaulx), once PM of dear old Blighty. Well, I didn't hold that against him. It also turns out that his second name is O'Brien, which I thought rather peculiar in the circumstances, as I don't believe O'Brien is a Lao or Lomwe surname. I did check with him that it wasn't a case of having misheard him, as with Kha'bahje / Cabbage, and that his name in fact was N'bryen, or similar, but he assured me that it was O'Brien, and he even got Doviko to write it out for me. Apparently, there was some sort of liason in his family history with one (or more) of the Fathers at a mission up north in central Malawi. He wouldn't reveal more, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, back to the subject of this post, the Bogd Khan.

It being the end of the cricket season in dear old Blighty, and there not being too much other cricket activity elsewhere in the world at this time of the year, as we wait for the big $20million Stanford match in Antigua, I thought I'd take the opportunity to get up to date with the backlog of cricket books.

However, I decided that - no! I would not read a book about cricket. Neither would I read a book about Africa. I decided that - for the first time in twenty years - I would read a book about something else.

I was getting into a slight rut, you see, and therefore decided to read something completely different - a book about Mongolia.

Mongolia is one of the very few places on earth where there is, historically, little or no cricket activity. There are some sound reasons for this. Firstly, most of Mongolia is very, very flat, and, undoubtedly, choosing a pitch in such circumstances would be difficult. I mean, one could well imagine the discussions - "Let's put the pitch there." "Why there? Why not over here - it's just as flat." And so on, ad infinitum.

Secondly, as you can see from this report, there are traditionally no willow trees in the Gobi, and therefore nothing from which to make cricket bats.

Thirdly, sitescreens are few and far between in Mongolia. Fourthly, there are few Yorkshire pit miners in Mongolia. I could go on at length about this topic, but I expect that by now you get the gist.

So, I thought, correctly as it turns out, that by reading a book about Mongolia there would be little-to-no chance of even happening upon a reference to cricket, cricketers, pitches, Geoffrey Boycott, and suchlike, and that, for the duration of the read, I would be completely cricketless and unlikely therefore to even think about the great game.

The book in question is about Freiherr Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, (an extremely distant ancestor of Albert McClochendichter on the female side of the family), better known as Baron Ungern-Sternberg, the 'Bloody White Baron'. He was called the Bloody White Baron not because of his skin colour, but because he was a White Russian (of German extract - hence the connection with McClochendichter's Germanic ancestors). The book was written by James Palmer, and here is a review (random quote "Ungern didn't start out mad").


The Bloody White Baron came to a sticky end. After some years of rampage, and generally not playing with a straight bat (metaphorically speaking - as there were no matches ongoing at the time in that part of the world) in Mongolia, he was led outside and shot. One of Ungern-Sternberg's claims to fame was that he befriended Ja Lama, who, according to the Wikipedia, was an adventurer of unknown birth, though I have it on good authority, and as is also obvious from his name, this chap Ja hailed from the Windies, and could spin a ball square.

I would point out that, since that time, in the early twentieth century, cricket in Mongolia has made an appearance, but I diverge! Back to the Bogd Khan.

According to Palmer, the Bogd Khan, previously knows as Javzandamba VIII (no relation whatsoever to Denagamage Proboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene), was the Holy Emperor in that part of the world, at that time. Possibly a descendant of Ghengis Khan, hence the name, the Bogd Khan was blind, extremely fat (so fat he could not bend down), a womaniser, a drunkard, possibly a cannibal, a manifestation of the bodhisattvas, and a reincarnated lama of the khutukhu lineage, and therefore a blissheid. Mongolian Buddhism at that time was fairly flexible, it must be said.

Not only that, but the Bogd Khan died of natural causes.

Well, I say! Isn't it amazing what one can learn when one turns away from cricket for an hour or two!

Only a couple of weeks to go until the Stanford 20/20. I think I may well read yet another non-cricket book before that time.

MM III