Oleg talks about the Baga-Chonos temple, its history and monks who served there: The new Baga-Chonos temple was built in 1999. It is a continuation of the historical Baga-Chonos temple which was built in 1778 by the descendants of Galzu-Basu zaisang with the permission of the Dalai Lama. The old temple was called Galdn-Rashi-Choiling. Being nomadic throughout its history, in 1904 the temple became stationary. When it was destroyed in 1930 the monks are believed to have buried the majority of the relics somewhere, and we are still searching for them to this day. The head of Russian Buddhists, Agvan Dorzhiev, came to the Baga-Chonos temple where he collected donations for the construction of a temple in St Petersburg. He also sent Kalmyk monks to study in Tibet. In the 17th century, here lived a monk called Kogshin-Zerge. When he was being cremated, it is said that three birds appeared from the fire. One family here keeps a tangka with his image. Our temple is known for famous monks who served here, including Badma Bovaev, Maani bagshi, Maral bagshi, Unzd gelyung, and Loora bagshi (who was abbot). Loora bagshi’s brother studied in Tibet. His clothings were handed over recently to the Central Temple in Elista. We have the paintings of all these monks in our temple. We also have a painting of Namka Kichikov. Although he served in the neighboring temple, our people went to see him. The Baga-Chonos temple belongs to the Nyingma school of Buddhism.