Chris Taylor
 

For over 2000 years pilgrims have gone to Mt Kailash in remote western Tibet. Tibetans call it Gang Rinpoche - Jewel of Snows. For others it is the navel of the universe, the Mt Meru of myth. Four faiths meet there: Bon, Buddhism, Jainism Hinduism. The three-day, fifty-three-kilometre kora around the mountain is Asia's holiest pilgrimage. One hundred and eight circumambulations of Kailash, say the sages, is an instant ticket to Nirvana.

In the shadowy glimmerings of dawn, the prospect of one circuit seems more than enough. Alex and I suspect we are ill-prepared, and the equipage of the German group we share the path with for the first two hours does nothing to persuade us otherwise. They have Ray Bans, sturdy packs and hiking boots, day-glo sleet-proof jackets, Swiss army pen knives and (we'd bet money on it) thermal underwear; their entourage includes two Tibetan lamas, six porters, eighteen yaks, two chefs and a Chinese guide. "Vee are Buddhists on pilgrimage," one of them explains.

Alex and I have two bags of miniature chocolate Easter eggs and 12 packs of instant noodles in a backpack carried by a 16-year-old Tibetan porter who has never been to Mt Kailash before.

Not that we have time to fret. The Kailash pilgrimage is a wonder of rivers, babbling streams, precipitous cliffs, cotton-candy waterfalls, rolling meadows, glacial moraine valleys and sweet little marmot creatures that stand on their hind legs outside their burrows and make whistling noises at us.

But by mid-afternoon exhaustion sets in. We're walking at altitudes of between 4600 and 4800 metres; we've been chased away from a sky burial site - a grim, malodorous outcrop of rock scattered with hacked up human remains - by feral dogs; and by late afternoon we are repeatedly forced to ford fast-running ice-melt streams. My feet, wet and cold, become heavy lumps of pain. As Drira Phuk monastery finally comes into sight, dancing flakes of snow fill the air.

The monastery is an enchanting huddle of stupas, sweeping roofs and whitewashed walls perched on a crag overlooking the monastery guesthouse. But, in what are probably the first hotel renovations carried out here in a decade, the rooms have been freshly cemented that very afternoon.

We sit glumly on a rock in the drifting snow and watch the Germans arriving in a majestic panoply of lamas, chefs, porters, and yaks with ribbons in their hair and bells tinkling at their necks. Is there a Buddhist parable about mercy and two needy travellers? we wonder. The Germans call a meeting and vote to lend us a tent and to allow us to eat with the porters.

The next morning we return the tent with thanks and strike off early. The challenge ahead is humping it over the 5630-meter Drolma pass and making it down to the other side with both lungs intact. I tackle it like a happy madman, scrambling up narrow mountain paths, slipping occasionally on loose scree and pausing to catch my breath on precipitous ledges. At the top of the pass I wait for Alex, and the two of us sit for a long hour beneath a fluttering tangle of prayer flags and gaze across at the sheer north face of Mt Kailash.

 

The first of the Germans to come toiling up the last approach to the pass is a doughty woman of around fifty. "Well done!" we cry. "That's quite a climb!"
"I am German," she says witheringly.
"We're not spending another night with those guys," I hiss to Alex. "They'll have us eating with the yaks this time."
We calculate that if we keep up the pace we set this morning, we can be back where we started, in the small town of Darchen, by 6 pm. After all, many Tibetans complete the entire pilgrimage in just one day.

We set off down a moraine slope strewn with massive boulders. At the bottom is a turquoise lake studded with broken shards of ice. Beyond the lake, the path snakes down to the valley floor on the eastern flank of Kailash. We hop and slide down it and make a stepping-stone crossing of a turbulent stream at the bottom. Three hours later we are waist-deep in a torrent - our stream has swollen into a river.

We probably should abandon our attempt to complete the pilgrimage in two days at this point. Instead, we push on. It begins to rain. The rain whips and stings like flung gravel; an icy wind slices through our clothes.

I go into auto-pilot. As I trudge along mechanically I start to have visions of home. This is stupid, I think. It was my idea to finish the pilgrimage today, I'm not going to spoil it all by collapsing with exhaustion. The thing is, that's exactly what I feel like doing. Not here. Not now. Not on a two-day walk around a mountain, I mutter.

I saw a documentary once about an Antarctic expedition. A man was sitting in a tent and outside everywhere was snow and wind. He was talking about how he was lonely and missed home and was tired of the cold, the wind and the snow, and he started weeping. I can picture him. I know how he felt. I think of all the people who must have died alone in faraway places and I feel horribly sad. And just a few hundred meters from Darchen - I can see it - I sit down in the cold and the wind on a rock. Alex turns around and waves at me. I nod wearily. This is stupid, I think. I climb to my feet and slowly, shivering, moaning, make my way into town.

Alex puts me into bed inside two sleeping bags, and piles blankets and quilts over me. It's hours before I stop shivering and my teeth chattering. I hear someone pronounce solemnly, "He'll be very sick."

But the next morning I'm up early and sitting outside in the sun. I'm joined by a French couple who have walked for two weeks from the faraway town of Ali to reach Kailash. I feel humbled. I don't remember what we talk about, just that they seem like wonderful people. Everybody seems wonderful. When the German pilgrims come traipsing into the guesthouse compound we clap each other on the back.

 

One of the Germans, a man with zealous missionary eyes, says to me, "You know what they say about Mt Kailash? One circuit of the holy mountain erases the sins of a lifetime. Who knows? Maybe it's not true. But it's better to be safe than sorry, ja?" I'm safe. And when I leave later that day in a truck for the holy lake of Manasarovar, I turn for a last close-up view of Mt Kailash. It glows in the late afternoon sun, its snow-capped crown throwing off a blaze of white light. No, I'm not sorry either.

All text ⌐ 1998 Chris Taylor.
All images ⌐ 1998 Lonely Planet Publications. All rights reserved. 		on the road