A pilgrim's trail

The journey to Mount Kailash (pictured), even for tourists, is
hardly made in comfort.

The journey to Mount Kailash (pictured), even for tourists, is hardly made in comfort.
Photo: Claire Scobie

Destination: China
Theme: Adventure

June 17, 2006

Tibet's sacred Mount Kailash is not easy to reach, but Claire Scobie finds karma is on her side.

After days of a dusty, bone-rattling ride in a truck along China's National Highway 219, the water of Lake Manasarovar seemed an unearthly blue. The journey had been hard, uncomfortable and exhausting - but then getting to Asia's holiest mountain was never going to be straightforward.

Mount Kailash, in far-west Tibet, is sacred to four religions. Buddhists and more than a billion Hindus regard it as the centre of the universe. It is the holiest place for Tibetan Buddhists, for whom a pilgrimage is essential.

At the mountain's foot lies Manasarovar, venerated by Hindus as the lake of the gods. Close by is Rakshas Tal, known as the lake of demons. Our Tibetan driver slowly circled the shrine marking the gateway to Mount Kailash - a clump of colourful prayer flags and hundreds of cairns of stones built by generations of pilgrims - before stopping.

I staggered out. Mount Kailash was nowhere to be seen: its 6700-metre peak was shrouded in cloud. Having travelled nearly 1000 kilometres from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, I could barely stifle a groan.

The mountain's enigmatic nature is, of course, part of its magnetism. It is 55 million years old, and is mentioned in records dating from the Bronze Age of Mesopotamia. It has held a fascination for scholars, explorers and spiritual seekers for centuries. The stranger approaches Mount Kailash, wrote the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin in the early 20th century, "with a feeling of awe. Mount Everest and Mount Blanc cannot compare with it."

For now, Mount Kailash remains mysterious and remote. But next month the world's highest railway, connecting Tibet to China, opens for commercial passengers. A British travel agency, G.W. Travel, is booking luxury railway tours for $6000 to $10,500. Tibetans fear the railway will bring more waves of Chinese immigrants and that natural resources will further diminish.

Development also threatens Mount Kailash. In the far west, a spectacular landscape in which deserts collide with the world's highest mountains and where ancient traditions endure, the Chinese Government has controversial plans to improve the infrastructure, including an airport and a road around the mountain, and aims to encourage more tourism.

For now, the simplest way to get to Mount Kailash is to join a group with a tour company. My three-week trip was arranged through a Lhasa travel agency. I was joined by Katrina, 31, a frequent visitor who speaks Tibetan fluently, and Jurgen, a German first-timer who had dreamed of spending his 60th birthday at Kailash, hoping for some sort of spiritual rebirth. Some go to Kailash seeking epiphanies, others adventure.

We had flown to Lhasa from the Chinese city of Chengdu and, after a few days getting accustomed to the altitude (nearly 3700 metres) and stocking up on supplies, we set off in a four-wheel-drive, with a guide, a cook and a truck for the equipment.What is usually an easy half-day drive from Lhasa to Tibet's second-biggest town, Shigatse, turned into a 12-hour marathon as cars were diverted because of work on the main road. After a day exploring Shigatse, which is clustered around the vast Tashilhunpo Monastery, and enjoying our last night in a comfortable hotel, we were ready for the journey.

We left the town at first light and passed through villages of creamy mountain-brick houses, typical of the central Tibetan Utsang region. It was harvest time and, wearing identical vermilion headscarves, women sang as they scythed the fields of barley. Except for the tractors, these were scenes from a pre-industrial age. Farther west, the landscape became more arid and the road rutted, evidence of monsoonal downpours. The ride became a roller-coaster over mountain passes, each one ascending a few hundred metres higher.

By day three we had realised Jurgen was struggling with altitude sickness. Despite his fitness, he had headaches, insomnia and breathlessness - and was not helped by the driver's tale of how "a strong German man" had died from altitude sickness at Kailash only weeks before. Jurgen decided, after much agonising, to return with the four-wheel-drive to Lhasa. Katrina and I were to continue in the truck along Highway 219, the southern route to Kailash.

In the following three days we forded rivers that coursed with melting snow, saw herds of kiang (wild ass) and deer streaming across the rugged, treeless landscape, and passed nomad encampments in which grubby children tended yak. Occasionally we came across a lammergeir, a giant bird that doubles as an undertaker - corpses here are fed to the vultures in the ancient Buddhist practice of "sky burial".

Along the way we had frequent picnics, featuring yak-butter tea (black tea, salt and butter), which tastes like soup and is said to be a good remedy for altitude sickness. Tibetans mix it with tsampa, made from ground, roasted barley flour. I stuck to my stash of Earl Grey and peanut-butter sandwiches.

Some nights we stayed in rudimentary guesthouses with terrible open-pit toilets. I preferred to camp. The sun was fierce during the day but at night we needed heavily padded sleeping bags. After all that, it was hard not to feel slightly disappointed by the time we reached Darchen, at the foot of the mountain.

Darchen is a rubbish-strewn pit with at least three guesthouses under construction, a mobile-phone tower and a handful of brothels catering for the Chinese military. It feels like the Wild West of Asia.

But Darchen is dwarfed by the majestic Kailash. Known as Kang Rinpoche - Precious Jewel of Snows - to Tibetans, the mountain is too sacred to be climbed. Instead, the goal for a Tibetan is to walk clockwise - or to make a kora - around the mountain. One kora purifies the sins of this lifetime, 108 koras secure a ticket to Nirvana. Some Tibetans make the 51.5-kilometre kora around the mountain in a day. Most Westerners take three. It is a strenuous trail that crosses a 5600-metre pass before descending to a river plain.

As we set off, the mountain was still obscured by cloud. The starting point was the giant flagpole, Tarboche, which is raised during the Saga Dawa festival every May/June, when the pilgrimage season starts. From there, the path ascends gently along the Lha Chu - the "five-coloured rainbow stream" - before reaching Dronglung (or Wild Yak Valley), which, with a sprinkling of snow, could be a scene from C. S. Lewis's Narnia books.

We stopped at a monastery and in the dim, smoky kitchen rubbed shoulders with pilgrims drinking yak-butter tea. I was assailed by the acrid smell of burning yak dung, used as fuel for fires, mixed with incense and unwashed bodies. The pilgrims, in thick, multicoloured tunics, many with knives in scabbards encrusted with jewels, could have been figures from a medieval pageant.

On the first night, we slept under the north face of the mountain, snow barely clinging to the sheer, jet-black rock. Before dawn I heard the familiar Buddhist chant Om Mani Padme Hung, muttered by Tibetan pilgrims as they passed our tent. Keen to complete the kora in a day, many had set off in the middle of the night. From here it was a tough 6.5-kilometre ascent to the Dolma La pass, and with each step the air became thinner.

We saw only one Chinese pilgrim - a soldier in combat gear - and one other group of Westerners, six Buddhists from Germany. Occasionally a Bonpo pilgrim passed us going anti clockwise - Mount Kailash is also the holiest shrine for Tibetan Bonpos, who practise the animist Bon religion that predates Buddhism. It was hard not to be moved by the devotion. Mani walls, each rock intricately carved with prayers, litter the landscape.

Under a big boulder is a narrow passage, about 4.5 metres long, through which pilgrims must wriggle on their bellies. Tibetans believe that only the virtuous can get through, so that even the slimmest sinners will get stuck. We wriggled through it successfully. There are also the ruins of stupas, shrines blown up by the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution, when pilgrimage was outlawed in Tibet (restrictions on religious practice were relaxed in the early 1980s).

On the final day of our kora, the sun illuminated the snowy south face, which is marked by a jagged striation known as the Stairway to Heaven. From there we continued to the Tirthapuri hot springs, where Tibetan pilgrims end their journey. You can't immerse yourself in the sulfurous pools, but they can provide a soothing foot bath.

The lunar landscape continues into the west to the pre-Buddhist kingdom of Guge. Some groups continue on, but we turned back to spend time on the shores of Lake Manasarovar. Such are the vagaries of the weather that by the time we arrived at the guesthouse on the lakeside there was a snowstorm. The crystalline-blue waters became waves of steely grey, and Kailash had again disappeared from view. Still, it was a good excuse to drink sweet tea and snuggle up by a fire stoked with yak pats.

On the drive back we stopped at a guesthouse where I overheard a Dutchman complain: "We went to Kailash and couldn't go around the mountain. It was closed because of snow." I felt for him; it did seem a shame that he had travelled so far without setting eyes on the sacred mountain. When I told our Tibetan guide, however, he merely shrugged and smiled. "It's karma," he said.

Claire Scobie is the author of Last Seen in Lhasa, to be released in Australia on July 3; $35.

Destination Mount Kailash

Getting there: Thai Airways (www.thaiair.com) offers flights between Sydney and Chengdu (via Bangkok). Onward flight with Air China from Chengdu to Lhasa (one-way, $269) needs to be booked through a local tour operator who will supply the mandatory permit to enter the Tibet Autonomous Region. Qantas flies Sydney to Beijing from $1360 return. Flights can be booked through Trailfinders (9247 7666, http://www.trailfinders.com).

In Lhasa, trips to Mount Kailash can be arranged through local agencies. The writer travelled with Windhorse Travel Agency (www.tibetwindhorse.com), which offers a 22-day round trip from Lhasa including accommodation and meals from $4104 per person. Groups are often flown from Kathmandu to Lhasa to travel overland back to Nepal via Mount Kailash. Itineraries may include visiting the towns of Sakya and Gyantse, or Mount Everest base camp.

When to go: The best season is between April and October. Saga Dawa - the Buddha's birthday - is when Tibetan pilgrims go en masse and usually coincides with the May full moon. July and August can be affected by monsoon. The roads are best from early September to mid-October.

Packages: Peregrine Adventures (1300 854 444, http://www.peregrineadventures.com) offers trips to Mount Kailash via Kathmandu and Lhasa. Trans Himalaya (www.trans-himalaya.com) offers trips to Mount Kailash via Beijing and Lhasa. The Australia Tibet Council provides advice on travel within Tibet (9283 3466, http://www.atc.org.au).

Culture clash

Mount Kailash remains remote. But, with plans to improve the region's infrastructure, including a civilian airport in the regional capital of Ngari and a rumoured ring road around the mountain, it's unlikely to remain that way. The Free Tibet Group in London has stepped up a campaign for the area to be turned into a World Heritage site. There is support from UNESCO for this, but the Chinese Government has to apply for the status and no application has been made.

The Chinese authorities recognise Tibet's tourism potential. In 2004 the ''autonomous" region attracted more than a million visitors and the authorities hope for more than 10 million by 2020. Among young Chinese people the roof of the world has already become chic: it's not uncommon to see young jeans-clad people from Beijing swinging prayer wheels.

Numbers are likely to rise with the introduction of the $5.4 billion Golmud-Lhasa railway, the "centrepiece" of China's Western development campaign. Thawing permafrost on the vast Qinghai-Tibet plateau could make it inoperable after only a decade. But, meanwhile, the railway is expected to increase militarisation of Tibet and threaten the environment. In a recent interview, the Tibetans' exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, said: "Some kind of cultural genocide is taking place ... In general, a railway line is very useful in order to develop, but not when politically motivated to bring about demographic change."

Despite greater economic freedom in Tibet as China opens up to the West, religious and political repression continues, preventing any Tibetan move towards self-determination. Even in remote areas, authorities control the monasteries. Tibetans are banned from worshipping the Dalai Lama, viewed by China as a pariah who threatens the unity of the Motherland. Many still do so secretly. Practising their faith is a form of quiet resistance.

"Every stone is important, every piece of land is something special," says one pilgrim. "Please tell people in the West that if they build a road, Kailash is finished."

Claire Scobie
