Nikolai talks about the earth mounds that are around the village of Tsagan-Nur: There are many mounds in our land. In the past, travelers used them as reference points. There were two mounds near the village of Tsagan-Nur that were visible from the village. Archeologists came and dug them up. Perhaps these two mounds were where noble people were buried. Our elders used to tell us not to climb to the top of these two mounds, and women were even banned from coming close. To the north of the village there was a place called Gurvan Busrug, meaning ‘three mounds’, where we went to play when we were children. Once, upon learning about it, my mother scolded me for playing on the mounds. People of the Taltakhin go to the lake to perform rituals to appease local spirits. During rituals no one climbs up the mounds. I have never seen rituals being performed on mounds anyway. Members of the Taltakhin clan are buried near a mound called Khar Tolga, meaning ‘Black top’. Since that place is also considered sacred, people do not go there for nothing. There is another mound called Komuna Tolga. In Soviet times several tractor drives wanted to extract earth from that mound, but Erendzhen Khasykovich Mutlyaev, whose father was buried there, did not let them touch it. It is also known that a commissar called Troyan was shot dead on the same mound. I worked for many years at a gas station from where Komuna Tolga is visible. I noticed that not only people but also animals always evade that mound.