Day Schedule

➤Breakfast

➤Ivolginsky Datsan

➤Old believers village

➤Check-out of the hotel and transfer to the train station to board the train to Ulaanbaatar

Unique samples of old Buryat art, as thangkas, sculptures, ritual objects are gathered and preserved at the Ivolginsky datsan. Among the monastery's treasures, there is a collection of old Buddhist manuscripts written in the Tibetan language on natural silk, and a greenhouse with a sacred Bodhi tree.

As a cultural and religious monument, the Datsan is protected by the State. The Datsan Centre consists of such temples as Sockshin-Dugan, Maidrin-sume, Devazhin, and Sakhiusan-sume. There are also a library, a hotel, the Choyra (Faculty of Philosophy), Dashi Choinhorlin (building of the Buddhist University), Museum of Buryat Art, suburgans (stupas), some infrastructure buildings and lamas' houses.

The Old Believers are Russian people, who still live traditionally in a small community in the Buryat Republic. They separated after 1666 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1652 and 1666. They have continued liturgical practices that the Russian Orthodox Church maintained before the implementation of these reforms. As any deviation from the correct Nikonian Orthodox was punishable by death, many of the Old Believers went into voluntary exile to Siberia, and some emigrated.

Another name of these people — Semeyskie or Family People — was given because they moved to Siberia with their big families. These special people keep the traditions of their ancestors and have a unique identity.