Nicholas Roerich's Caravan and the Shining Oval over the Kukunor District

In 1927 the painter Nicholas Roerich was leading an expedition across Central Asia. A Russian born theosophist, he travelled with Helena Roerich, his son George Roerich, Dr K. Ryabinin, L. and I. Bogdanov, and Mongol caravaneers. That summer they were camped at Sharagolji, at the foot of the Humboldt ridge, near the pass of Ulan Daban. On the heights above, they were building a stupa they called the Suburgan of Shambhala.

5 August 1927. About half past nine in the morning. Some of the caravaneers noticed a remarkably big black eagle flying above them. Seven of them stopped to watch the unusual bird. Then another caravaneer spoke: "There is something far above the bird."

They all saw it. Something big and shiny, reflecting the sun, "like a huge oval moving at great speed." It travelled north to south and, crossing the camp, changed direction from south to southwest. There was time to take field glasses, and through them the group "saw quite distinctly the oval form with the shiny surface, one side of which was brilliant from the sun." Then it disappeared in the intense blue sky.

No sound is mentioned. No beings. Just a bright shape and at least eight people watching it go. Two days later the stupa was consecrated. On 19 August the caravan started across Ulan Daban toward the Tsaidam salt flats.

In Shambhala (1930), Roerich told the story again, this time to a lama. Now the eagle is a huge black vulture flying low. The object is "something shining and beautiful," later called a sphere. The lama gave his reading: "you are guarded by Shambhala." The object, he said, was a protecting force "in this Radiant form of Matter," and he told Roerich to follow the direction it had moved.

The account reached UFO literature through NICAP. The UFO Evidence (1964) gave the year as 1926, an error that still survives in popular lists. Leon Davidson checked the 1929 diary and confirmed 1927. Other lists move the camp to the Altai Mountains of Mongolia and have the object turning southeast. Roerich wrote Kukunor, and southwest.

Davidson also offered an explanation: a weather balloon from Sven Hedin's Sino-Swedish expedition, which launched balloons in the region. Jason Colavito notes that people are poor judges of size in the sky. Brad Sparks of NICAP disagreed. Davidson gave no launch records, he said, and a balloon of that apparent size would have been only about 4,000 ft away. The two expeditions "were never closer than about 400 miles from each other."

Nobody accuses Roerich of inventing the sighting. The argument is about who turned it into a flying saucer. Bill Chalker says the talk of "an aircraft or spacecraft from Shambhala," and of "men from other planets," came from Andrew Tomas, not Roerich. Tomas attended Roerich's 1935 Shanghai lecture. Colavito argues that his claimed "flying saucer research since 1935" was borrowed from Roerich.

The journey itself ended hard. In October 1927 Tibetan troops stopped the caravan near Nagchu and held it on the Changtang plateau until March 1928. Five people died. The shining oval above Sharagolji remains a puzzle.