Mongolia is a little remote for most Westerners, 20 hours by air from New York, 17 hours from London, but it might be worth the effort for the Naadam,
the Festival of Manly Arts, held throughout the country every July. (Photo: Alicia Kish,
Flickr).
Or for the World Fitness Federation's Bodybuilding World Championship, to be held October 24-27, 2014, with contestants from over 60 countries.
Out in the Gobi Desert, 5 hours from Ulaanbataar by car, lies the small town of Kharkhorin. In the 13th century it was Karakoram, the most famous city in the world, the capital of an empire that stretched from Korea to the Danube.
Today its main tourist draw is Erdene Zuu, the oldest Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. At its height, it had 100 temples and over 1000 monks. Destroyed during the Communist purge of religion, it was restored as an active monastery in 1990.
The Kharkhorin Rock, a two-foot long stone penis on a hill about 2 km from Erdene Zuu, was apparently installed to keep the monks' minds off sex (I'm not sure how you can look at it and not think of sex).
It also functioned as a fertility symbol. Women sat on it and prayed to get pregnant. I assume that men also sat on it and prayed for more potency.
There's a fence around it now, so you can't pray for pregnancy or potency anymore.
There's a newer, more impressive, fully erect penis statue nearby. You can sit on it if you want, but you'll have to be a good climber: it's 10 feet tall.
