A grinning monk with nut-brown eyes invites Ona and me to his monastery in a ger. His father and grandfather were monks and hid in the surrounding hills during the dark years of communist persecution when thousands of monks were killed. Now he and his sister have created a monastery here and local families come to erect monuments to their dead ancestors. A family is gathered today in the wind and sun to celebrate the lives of their deceased grandparents and raise a monument to them, which they fill with Buddhist texts, rice, silk, milk and fruits.
As I went to leave, the monk pressed into the palm of my hand a small handful of sea-shells, seeds, and beads of corral and turquoise - to bring me luck and protect me. It must be a slow-burn effect, as within five minutes of tucking them gratefully into my pocket, I realised that our hobbled horses had disappeared over the hill and far away and, within an hour of recovering them, I was thrown by my horse mid-gallop!