Rendezvous with God - A journey to Kailash Mansarovar

On June 11^th, 2012, as I stood huddled together with my husband at the staggering height of 5500m (Mount Everest is 8868m) on the Dolma La Pass with Mount Kailash in the background to get a picture clicked for posterity, I felt a numbness in my toes and an elation in my heart. This was the culmination of an arduous journey to Mount Kailash, believed to be the sacrosanct abode of Lord Shiva, the ‘Destroyer’ in the Hindu Trinity of Gods. This trip was not a vacation for me. Vacations are journeys that give us a view of the outside world. This was a pilgrimage, a journey inside, into the unexplored consciousness that had remained dormant in me all these years and had got silenced in the humdrum of life.

                              At the highest point of the glacier…the Dolma La!

Mount Kailash is held in great reverence by Hindus worldwide as it is considered to be the abode of Lord Shiva on this earth. Since childhood, I’d heard mythological stories of Lord Shiva residing here on Mount Kailash with Goddess Parvati as his consort. As I stand on the highest point of the glacier, my mind races through pictures of Lord Shiva sitting on the mountain top, his eyes half closed, deep in meditation with a serpent around his neck and a crescent moon on his hair locks. I smile inwardly at the naivety of the thought. Lord Shiva is not the name of some deity sitting on the mountain top. He is the supreme spirit who is everywhere, yet nowhere.

I am pleasantly surprised to notice that there are no man-made structures to mark Lord Shiva’s presence on Mount Kailash. The nothingness of this raw beauty is terrifying and enchanting at the same time. The white frozen glaciers, merciless cold winds and snow-laden peaks peering at us from all sides, in perfect harmony with each other, unflinching in their presence. This certainly looks like God’s abode to me!

   

                  Shiva in the clouds above Mount Kailash …… an artist’s impression!

My husband can sense that I am overwhelmed by my surroundings and numb with cold. He nudges me to move, he knows the pitfalls of staying too long at this height. We've been instructed by the local guide to not spend more than a couple of minutes at the peak, the high altitude and lack of oxygen can play havoc with one’s reflexes and can throw one into unconsciousness. My husband extends his hand to hold mine. There is a finality in this moment of the journey that started a week ago. We look around in awe, trying to inscribe the scenery on our minds, the huge mammoths of snow stare back at us.

We head back. The other side of the mountain is steep downhill. The rarefied air, the coldness gripping my feet and the strange magnetism of this place is making me breathless. We quietly walk behind each other on that narrow path, the towering peaks bear witness that we were here. On the side of the gorge is the snow-filled valley called 'Gauri Kund', the mythological frozen lake, bathing pond of Goddess Parvati. Our sole aim is to get back to the nearest camp site ‘Zuthulphuk’ before darkness falls.

The exciting journey to the revered Mount Kailash had started from my domicile in Delhi, India 7 days ago. Nestled deep inside the Trans-Himalayan region, travelling to Kailash from India requires a multitude of official paperwork and formalities since it lies in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. We were perhaps destined to travel since everything just fell into place, the visas and the medical tests et al. In no time, I found myself preparing for the journey. We had booked an ‘All-flight’ route plan with a travel agent who specialised in tours to Mount Kailash. Round Air trip takes about 12 days to complete and is considered to be the quickest. Land route, on the other hand, takes over a month to complete, is believed to be tedious and roads are not your best friend in this part of the world. As the D-Day approached, the anxiety of traveling to a destination known for its unforgiving terrain, unpredictable weather and very basic amenities had gripped my head in a medley of thoughts. The idea of leaving my two little children under my mother’s care for so many days did nothing to assuage my frayed nerves.

Entry permit to China is generally procured collectively for groups of pilgrims from India. We were travelling with a motley group of eighteen people, all strangers to each other initially. By the time the trip came to an end though, we had shared some of the most bizarre yet memorable moments of our lives together. From flying in small dingy aircrafts on isolated airstrips where we had to clumsily scramble over cargo to get to the rear of the plane to reach our seats, to buying odd-looking woollen caps from a kiosk in a remote Chinese town to cover our noses from the biting cold.

After five days of extensive travel via Kathmandu, Nepal and the border towns of Tibet and China, we arrive at the Holy Lake Mansarovar (Height 4590m). The lake lies in front of Mount Kailash, the single-block pyramid mountain covered with pristine white snow is visible in all its glory from here as it juts out imposingly from behind the bluish waters of the lake.

All hues of blue at Lake Mansarovar with Mount Kailash in the background…this scenery will be etched in our minds forever!

A short drive takes us from Lake Mansarovar to ‘Yama Dwar’ (Literally translating into ‘The gateway to heaven’, ‘Yama’ being the God of death). This is the last point of the motorable road.

The challenging part of the pilgrimage starts from here, that of doing the circum-ambulation, ‘Kora’ as it’s called, of Mount Kailash. ‘Kora’ lasts 3 days, covers a stretch of 52 kilometres around the mountain and can be done either on foot or on horseback. It is not for the faint-hearted, we’ve been told. Walking uphill in the thin mountain air can be strenuous. On the other hand, sitting perched on a pony over treacherous mountain trek where the slightest misstep could plunge a person into a bottomless gorge is equally scary. Not surprisingly though, a lot of pilgrims terminate their journey at the foothill of the mountain at Lake Mansarovar. They take a dip in freezing waters of the lake, take a good view of Mount Kailash and return home, hoping for salvation.

‘Yama Dwar, an unassuming Tibetan style monument with a great significance for pilgrims…..don’t miss Mount Kailash in the backdrop! 

Our group count has also come down from eighteen to ten, thanks to some scary narratives of a Russian group of mountaineers who had returned the day before. They had experienced heavy snowfall and had to sledge down the mountain side to reach base camp. Using a slippery mountain side as an inclined plane cannot be a very inviting prospect even for the most devout pilgrims. Visualising myself sliding down from a mountain side makes my heart sink and my blood pressure rise. But having come this far, we take our chances and after some deliberation proceed ahead on a pony.

  

                             Day 1 of the Kora with Mount Kailash in the backdrop!

We completed the circum-ambulation of Mount Kailash in 3 days. The journey is difficult, to say the very least. But unlike the Russian mountaineers, we did not have to sledge down the mountain side. The sunny weather without a speck of cloud in the sky for the entire length of the journey made our descent rather easy. 

As we approached Lake Mansarovar after the round trip from the other side of the mountain, I couldn’t help but feel humbled by this formidable journey. Humbled by the realisation about our own insignificance in the larger scheme of things that are beyond our knowledge and comprehension. This humility was also coupled with pride.  Pride over the fact that I, for once, could utterly disregard the needs of my physical body, wean it away from all kinds of material comforts that we are so used to back home and still experience inexplicable happiness that all the comforts of the world put together cannot buy!