These are my 1st cards from Mongolia and both are Unesco sites!
The 1st card was sent from Germany by Claus and it shows the Erdene Zuu Monastery, part of the World Heritage Site entitled Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape and Galina sent me the 2nd card, yurts on the Tes River bank.
© B. Sodbileg
Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape sprawls along the banks of the Orkhon River in Central Mongolia, some 320 km west from the capital Ulaanbaatar. It was inscribed by UNESCO in the World Heritage List as representing evolution of nomadic pastoral traditions spanning more than two millennia.
The Erdene Zuu Monastery is probably the most ancient surviving Buddhist monastery in Mongolia.
Construction of the Erdene Zuu monastery was started in 1585 by Abtai Sain Khan, upon the (second) introduction of Tibetan Buddhism into Mongolia. It is surrounded by a wall featuring 100 stupas.
The monastery was damaged during the warfare with Dzungars in 1688. It was rebuilt in the 18th century and by 1872 had a full 62 temples and up to 1000 monks inside.
In 1939 the Communist leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan had the monastery ruined, as part of a purge that obliterated hundreds of monasteries in Mongolia and killed over ten thousand monks. Three small temples and the external wall with the stupas remained; the temples became museums in 1947.
Erdene Zuu was allowed to exist as a museum only. However, after the fall of Communism in Mongolia in 1990, the monastery was turned over to the lamas and Erdene Zuu again became a place of worship. Today Erdene Zuu remains an active Buddhist monastery as well as a museum that is open to tourists. - in: wikipedia
Photo © Pvel Filatov, 2012
The Tes River is a river in northwestern Mongolia and southern Tuva, Russia. The Tes River is primary source of the Uvs Lake.
The Tes River is 1 of the 5 mongolian areas, part of the Uvs Nuur Basin.
The main feeder to Uvs Nuur is the Tes-Khem River, which has its source in a fresh-water lake, Sangyn Dalai Nuur, in the alpine meadows and larch forests of the Sangilen uplands at the eastern extremity of the basin (in Mongolia). The Tes-Khem then flows 500 km westwards, through steppe and desert, into southern Tuva, and then back into Mongolia, before emptying into Uvs Nuur. For its last 100 km, the river meanders through an extensive wetland complex, a green swathe in an otherwise semi-desert landscape; its delta is some 40 km wide and is an important wildlife habitat. - in: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/769/
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