Travel Guide East Asia China

West Tibet’s Mount Kailash, Asia’s Most Sacred Peak by Tom Carter
My channel to purification began in the home of Shiva the Destroyer – or perhaps it was just his garbage bin. The shantytown of Darchen at the base of Mt Kailash in western Tibet is populated with half-naked, red-cheeked children singing in junk masses. Teahouses running on car series authority, with dirt floors lined with old pillows, help as bedcovers for road-weary pilgrims and backpackers before they launch on their kora around Asia’s most sacred mountain.

The word kora means ‘pilgrimage circuit’, or modestly, ‘big circle’. It describes the clockwise pathway followed by fervent followers of Buddhism and Hinduism in their stab to attain spiritual absolution for the sin of being vivacious. Throughout Tibet one can see the faithful making koras around temples and other holy seats, however none as consecrated as the 52-kilometer circumambulation of Mt Kailash (known in Tibetan as Kang Rinpoche and in Mandarin as Shen Shan).

I began my pilgrimage at daylight (after hesitantly downing a cup of saline yak butter tea for dilution) guided by a trail of prayer flags up the steamy southern pleat to the Gyangdrak and Selung monasteries, and then next the few gemstone cairns back down to the kora. At one spot the kora split off, foremost to a sky interment spot, the place where Buddhists bid farewell to the deadly by dismembering corpses and parting the vestiges for the birds of victim that form koras of their own far above. The proximity of a burial location is disturbingly announced in increase by the tattered clothes in the vicinity, and more abruptly, by the occasional being bone dropped from the sky by said birds.

I sustained my journey, cursory several resplendently dressed pilgrims watering their horses in a dappled chasm. Before long, I indoors at the Chuku monastery, which hugs the western hillside above the Lha-Chu River, in plain observe of the enigmatic Mt Kailash. Aside from being the most holy Buddhist location in Asia, it is also the supply of four great rivers: the Sutlej, which flows to India; the Indus, to Pakistan; the Karnali, which feeds the Ganges; and Tibet’s own Yarlung Tsangpo.

I indoors at Mt Kalish at dusk, which in summertime comes about 10pm; Mt Kailash was bathed in crimson-red hues, a spectacular site, however one shortly obscured by drizzly shower clouds. Exhausted, I curved in for the night at an adjacent yurt on the grassy banks of Damding Donkhang and presently after I set my leader on the filthy pillows, I floor asleep.

I’d been cautioned by several experienced pilgrims that the moment half of the Mt Kailash kora was the most fractious. And, trusty enough, as shortly as I agreed Dirapuk monastery and crossed the Lha-Chu tributary the following morning, the direction became increasingly treacherous. The steep means eventually weak out – as did the air – and then disappeared all together among the large boulders spread about the Drolma-Chu valley.

I am in my early 30s, but in no time was poignant slower than an old female. Indeed, 80-year-old Tibetans spinning their hand-seized prayer wheels instantly out-paced me. Before I had ascended but one-third of the way up the 5,600-meters of evil that is the Drolma-La Pass, I was doubled done exhaustion. It was then, during this moment of devotion beneath the luminously blond face of Mt. Kailash, there appeared before me a dream. Her name was Yang Jing, my own Tibetan spirit of mercy.

One day previous, I had met Yang Jing, a Ngari limited, in the company of her grandmother. At the time, both of them were on their third kora in just three time. When she covered me draped over a large boulder, they were already central through their fourth. Carrying only prayer beads and a small pouch of necessities, she relieved me of my burden, a rucksack crammed with ‘non-essentials’ – mainframe, camera, food, clothes and water.

Embarrassing as it was, a lovely Tibetan woman, eight years my trainee, agreed my fill the breather of the way around Mount Kailash, plainly because I could not. (At the end of our kora, Yang Jing not only refused payment for her help, but vacant me a gift – her decades-old yak bone prayer beads; the only recompense I can now tender her is this piece).

Though weighed down with my belongings, Yang Jin quickly outdistanced me, while I struggled along at the rear, making my way up the forlorn Drolma-La, demise the frosty brooks of Shiva-Tsal and the clothing-tormented gravel and deathly shanks of locks the pilgrims dump to show the exclusion of their old sins. With a light snowfall frosting the terrain, I lastly jammed up with Yang Jing atop the pretty clearance where she recited her prayers.

Then with the frozen olive waters of Gauri Kund lake below, we prudently began our origin. As we reached the minor level, I was able to breathe again and the remainder of the kora was a delight. We crossed snowstorm banks and passed august elders prostrated in grassy meadows fed by small streams trickling down from the mountain’s horizontally-stripy crystal face. Later, we arrived at a murky encampment, with chanting pilgrims meeting around yak-compost fires.

We repeated gone fields of boulders blanketed in thick green moss before charming a relax in a tea marquee crowded with cheerful Tibetans. Instant noodles and pathetic drinks were offered, but I bravely choose the traditional Tibetan staples of yak butter tea and tsampa, an ‘time’ bread made from barley flour kneaded with the tea. Like most Tibetan pilgrims, this was all Yang Jing carried in her small satchel during her multiple koras. Tsampa may be flavorless, still it smells dirty, but it seems to give sustenance and energy profusely for Tibetans to perfect 13 circuits.

After our lean, we pushed on through the opulent hillsides, tracing the Dzong-Chu brook awaiting we came to the Zutul-Puk monastery where most of the Hindus from India had set up camp. I, too, might have exhausted the night there, but in nastiness of the blazing agony in my legs, I was determined to track the rugged Yang Jing back to Darchen to complete the kora on my support day. My resolve was happy when we finally rounded the last bend and met with a stunning vista overlooking the Barkha plains: the Himalayas to the south, bright under the sundown sky.

We walked by a series of mani prayer stockade and extolled yak skulls, together, into the scenery sun. It seemed a fitting way to end this epic tale, with the southern sapphire face of Kailash behind us – along with our sins.

Travel Pack Several voyage agencies and hotels around Lhasa can display weeklong Land Cruiser expeditions along Tibet’s southern forward past Lake Manasarovar to Mt Kailash for about RMB 4,000 per role. Alternately, account travelers can take a three-day sleeper along the northern course, passing from Lhasa’s north bus position the pair days to the station urban of Ali for RMB 700. Water, food and a skylight seat in the front of the bus is intensely recommended. From Ali’s north junction you can clutch a bother on a ‘gypsy’ jeep to Darchen/Mt Kailash, or catch an elate on one of the trucks from close construction sites, or the occasional rascal bus. Permits are no longer essential for tour in Tibet and as such no group should trust you for one.

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