Possibly the last person you might expect to have backed the building of a Buddhist temple was Stalin, but in 1946 permission came from the Kremlin to erect a datsan in Buryatiya, in gratitude to the locals for their sacrifices during WWII it’s often claimed. But instead of reviving the erstwhile centre of Buryat Buddhism at Gusinoe Ozero, the authorities granted a plot of marshy land near the village of Ivolga, 35km from central Ulan-Ude, on which the temple was to be built. The first temple was a modest affair, but today the datsan has grown large and is expanding fast. The confident epicentre of Russian Buddhism attracts large numbers of the devout as well as tourists on half-day trips from the Buryat capital.
The Ivolginsky datsan was one of only two working Buddhist temples in Soviet days (the other was at Aginskoe); most of what you see today has been built in the last two decades. A clockwise walk around the complex takes in countless monastery faculties, administrative buildings, monks’ quarters and temples, but the most elaborate of all is the Itygel Khambin Temple honouring the 12th Khambo Lama, whose body was exhumed in 2002. To general astonishment, seven decades after his death his flesh had still not decomposed. Some ‘experts’ have even attested that the corpse’s hair is still growing, albeit extraordinarily slowly. The body is displayed six times a year, attracting pilgrims from across the Buddhist world.
To reach the monastery, first take marshrutka 130 (R40, 40 minutes, four hourly) from Ulan-Ude’s bus station to the last stop in uninteresting Ivolga. There another marshrutka (R20, no number, just a picture of the monastery or the word Дацан pasted to the front windscreen), waits to shuttle visitors the last few kilometres to the monastery compound. Otherwise contact agencies in Ulan-Ude, which offer private transfers and tours with well-informed guides.
