Interview

In 1995 Galsan Tschinag led his people, scattered under Communist rule, back to their native lands in the High Altai mountains of Mongolia in a huge caravan train. Katharina Rout, translator of The Blue Sky (Tschinag’s autobiographical novel about his childhood) describes her meetings with him in Germany and Mongolia.

In 2001, I fell in love with Galsan Tschinag’s work. My first e-mail reached him two days before the fall of the Twin Towers, his reply came to me two days after. He called my hope to translate The Blue Sky one day a small sun, shining from the West, and sent me a large herd of good spirits. Coming from a practicing shaman, the wish for good spirits meant a great deal.

Two years later, I met Tschinag when he was in Germany on one of his many reading tours. Immediately he inquired about my family and began sharing the story of his. He spoke of life, death, family, love, and the heart. Before dinner, I learned about his horses, after dinner, about how as a shaman he heals people, even with a life-threatening injury inflicted by a horse. A bit of Mongolia had arrived in Germany. He takes some Altai soil with him wherever he goes.

In 2004, my husband and I went to visit Galsan in Mongolia. From the first moment, we were impressed by the hospitality. His children had been instructed to guide and take care of us. In Ulaanbaatar, they put us on the plane to Ölgiy, where we were met by another son who had spent two days coming down from the Altai to pick us up. From Ölgiy (elevation ...