An agnostic in Kailash
from Himal, October 2011
The
Mind of Brahma
Dilip Simeon
In 2009 I undertook what was to be the most
memorable journey of my life. I have made other journeys as momentous in their
implications, but I would have to think of a reason. The trip to Tibet by air,
road and foot was unmistakably different. It is undertaken mainly by pilgrims,
to a place considered sacred by hundreds of millions of Buddhists, Hindus and
Bon-pos (followers of the pre Buddhist Tibetan shamanistic religion). When it
ended, I understood why.
The trip was motivated solely by the
fascination for Manasarovar and Kailash on the part of our team leader and my
dear friend Madhu Sarin, for whom it was the fifth pilgrimage in nine years.
Her intense descriptions and photographs had kindled my interest, and although
I knew I would accompany her someday, the declining health of my parents made it
impossible to fix a date. As their only child, I had responsibilities that made
it unthinkable for me to undertake a dangerous journey to places out of reach
by telephone, from which it was impossible to return at short notice. And after
my mother passed away in 2004, I was preoccupied with looking after my father,
who died in 2007. It was all very painful, but with both of them gone, the
pilgrimage became realistic. As it turned out, it also acquired a transcendent
meaning for me, because I took along some ashes and relics of my parents.
At 15,000 feet, Manasarovar is one of the
highest fresh-water lakes in the world. It has a circumference of nearly 90 km.
That of Kailash is about 55 km. It is located in a remote part of western Tibet Himalaya , a range much older than the Himalaya . I leave it to the reader to study the information about this
region and the history of pilgrimages. Many pilgrims take the Indian government’s sponsored tours
that began in the late 1970’s after the PRC permitted them. No one has climbed
Kailash –although legend has it that Tibetan mystic Milarepa’s ascent in the 11th
century marked the victory of Buddhism in Tibet. China reportedly permitted some
Spanish mountaineers to climb in 2001, but this was resisted by the
Tibetans, and the news was later denied by the Chinese government. German
climber Reinhold Messner, who had declined a Chinese offer to ascend Mount
Kailas in the mid-1980s, criticised the aborted Spanish attempt with the words,
‘If we conquer this mountain, then we conquer something in people's souls.’
We arrived in Nepalganj, on the Indo-Nepal
border, on May 22. The airport here is the hub for trips into the western Himalaya.
Flights are dependent upon the weather. The aircraft are small (with a capacity
of 19 passengers) and in heavy demand - bookings don’t assure you of a flight. We
waited for two days before catching a scary 45 minute flight that took us
across ascending valleys, with tall mountains looming large before us, and
landed on a gravelly mud strip in Simikot (9500 ft). We also saw helicopters
taking off for the Tibet border - some pilgrims are transported within thirty
minutes to the plateau! Tour operators apparently do not warn pilgrims of the danger
of ascending from sea level to 15,000 feet in less than two hours. It’s not
surprising many people die of high altitude sickness. We learned of one flight
that took off with about a dozen passengers of whom three arrived dead.
The
Karnali river valley
However, it’s not tough if one acclimatises
slowly. Our team included our cook Devi, the trekking guide Pradeep Ghale,
team-leader Madhu Sarin, an Australian professor and myself. We took ten days
walking into Tibet, accompanied upto the border by a mule-driver and our
luggage on his pack animals. He rode a small pony whom we named our ‘ambulance ghoda’. Most other trekkers do this in half the time; however, Madhu wanted to do justice to both external and
internal aspects of the pilgrimage and paced us accordingly. En route we
camped at wonderful places in forests, beside running water, through misty
glades and meadows, sometimes in light drizzle. Early one morning at one
camp-site I heard a most enchanting bird-song. There were difficult stretches.
At places landslides blocked our way, in one instance the path had caved in,
requiring us to make a difficult ascent up the hillside. We walked beside the
Karnali, a tributary of the Ganga, and one of the rivers that originate in the
Kailash region. North-western Nepal is a remote area, one of the zones where
the Maoist insurgency began. Madhu recalled how on an earlier trip, she had
been accosted by Maoist fighters on horseback demanding contributions from
trekkers (they gave her a receipt). The scenery kept changing, with forest
giving way to scrub as we ascended. Succumbing to altitude exhaustion, we
camped for two days and three nights at a beautiful meadow south of the Nara
La pass (15000 ft). This prepared us for
the ascent to Tibet.
When we finally reached the top of Nara La
after a gruelling climb, a grand vision of the Tibetan plateau greeted us, and
we took photos of ourselves around the chorten
atop the pass jostling with shepherds
and sheep and goats with little bundles of rice atop their backs. This route
has been a trade and pilgrimage path for centuries. Chortens are stupas,
often rapidly put together with stones, which are then added to by other
passers-by. The top of every mountain pass in the region seems to be graced
with a chorten and prayer flags fluttering in the breeze.
Entering
Tibet
Entering the People’s Republic of China at
Hilsa was instructive. Here we connected with our Tibetan guide, a small truck
and a Land Cruiser, sent all the way from Lhasa. We underwent medical checks,
and as swine-flu was the epidemic of the season, were told to fill forms that
asked whether we had ‘been near pig’. Our luggage was examined carefully, and I
realised that the authorities were especially concerned about reading material.
As the guards rummaged among my clothing and toiletries, they came across
bird-books, Agatha Christie and P G Wodehouse. Then there appeared something
that bothered them greatly: The Rebel, by Albert Camus. It had a red cover and
caused great alarm. Senior officers were summoned and flipped through the book
with Orwellian suspicion. Books! Ideas! Tibet! Rebellion! Red! I could almost
see the paranoia at work. I tried in vain to assure them it was philosophy,
written in the 1950’s and harmless. It was all of no avail, since they didn’t
understand English. I had a nightmarish vision of being shoved back across the
border – when at last they relented. Shivji had intervened. Or maybe Chairman
Mao’s ghost took pity on a retired maoist. Albert would have been amused.
The first thing we saw after this was
the body of an Indian pilgrim being readied for transportation into Nepal. We
heard later that several pilgrims had died that year. We spent the night at a
rest-house in Taklakot, on the ancient trade route, now a major military
cantonement, where we provisioned ourselves with foodstuffs, cooking gas and
other necessities. The morning found us on a three hour drive to Manas. It felt
strange travelling on flat amd arid surfaces after emerging from high
mountains. The view of the Himalayas from the plateau is spectacular. No
foothills are visible: you only see snow-clad peaks stretching far into the
distance. They shone with a salmon-pink glow, as we passed through villages
with exquisitely painted doorways and windows. After an hour, Kailash appeared
on the horizon and Madhu stepped out of the vehicle to perform sashtang-pranam. I was moved. We drove a
while longer and arrived at Rakshastal, origin of the Satluj. The vast
lake glowed in brilliant acquamarine blue with Kailash clearly visible.
Rakshastal is the mythological residence of Ravana, created by him to
perform acts of devotion to Lord Shiva. Manasarovar, shaped like
the sun, and Rakshastal, shaped as a crescent, represent brightness
and darkness. Its water is salty, hosts no aquatic
plants or fish and is considered poisonous by locals. We
disembarked, and spent some time on its shores.
Manasarovar
Shortly thereafter we arrived at Chiu
Gompa, on the shores of the holy lake. The expanse of calm water, the sight of distant
snowy peaks, the feel of cold air and clear sunlight and the vision of the
sacred mountain dominating the skyline all took my breath away. Manasarovar and
the peaks surrounding it struck me as an image of Indralok, the abode of the
gods. It was cold: even in June there is ice on the lake's edge. We took a week
on the kora, the Tibetan name for
parikrama. Our equipment including a kitchen tent, gas cylinders, food and
medical provisions. We also carried some light cans of oxygen for emergencies.
The land was undulating plain, with
stretches of scrub and marsh. The colours and moods of the lake were versatile:
I once counted six different hues of blue. The southern side of the lake is
dominated by the Gurla Mandhata peak, which looks like a celestial staircase.
Around Manas we saw herds of musk deer running free and Tibetan wild asses
(kiang). One day I saw a large black animal walking confidently some 100 metres
away. It stopped for a while, enough for me to take a photograph. Later were
identified it as a Tibetan wolf. There were scores of exotic birds, plovers and
ducks, the Ruddy Sheldrake and bar-headed geese. The creeks flowing into the
lake teemed with fish – but no one fishes here. Dead fish found on the banks
are used by shamans for medicinal purposes.
I saw only Tibetans and Europeans walking.
We saw cavalcades of vehicles carrying Indians and Nepalis doing the kora in
three hours. They would stop at selected places to throw hundred-rupee notes
into the water – our Tibetan driver was amused and collected them as mementos.
There are six monasteries (gompas) along the route, and we stayed overnight at
two of them, otherwise camping at suitable places. Many devotees take a dip in
the lake but the cold water was too daunting for me! At one point I placed a
part of my parents’ relics in the water.
The
Kailash Kora
After completing the Manas kora in seven
days, we drove to Darchen, a small town and army cantonment, the point where the
Kailash kora begins. There are shops, eating places run by Chinese and Tibetans
(in one of the latter I saw posters of Priyanka Chopra), and houses of mud and
stone. It has some filthy official guest houses and cleaner Tibetan ones, at
one of which we stayed. That evening we decided to make a quick trip up to the
Gyangdrag gompa – this belongs to the Drikung sect, different from the Dalai Lama’s
Gelugpa school. The trip involved a bumpy ride up the stream descending from
the holy mountain – the Kailash Chu. Gyangdrag was founded in the 13th century
and rebuilt several times. We saw beautiful tankhas and spoke with a friendly
monk. We then pushed further to an abandoned gompa behind which Kailash loomed
large, and nearer still, the rock-massif that represents Nandi the bull. I
placed the remaining relics of my parents in Kailash Chu and we filled some
bottles with water. It was freezing cold, but I splashed some water into my
eyes, with a sense that it might help me see things more clearly than before!
Looking southwards we saw Rakshas Tal plus the Himalayas including Nanda Devi.
Next morning we headed westward from
Darchen along dirt tracks and entered the valley of Amitabaha, along the banks
of the Lha Chu, along which a motorable track goes a considerable distance. Many
yatris proceed in jeeps upto a point where they get a darshan of Kailash, and
turn back. A dog began following us at a distance and remained with us for two
days, reminding me of the canine that followed Yudhishthira on his last journey
out of Hastinapura. A sense of timelessness filled me as I thought about the
thousands of pilgrims who had walked the same pathways for centuries. Along the
way we passed a sky burial site at Tarpoche, a place where in earlier times bodies of expired
lamas were left to the elements and animals. We were warned about the ferocious
dogs that frequent this place.
Soon we entered the stark valley that surrounds the mountain and passed by Choku Gompa on a cliffside, remote and barely visible. Kailash now appeared in full splendour. I took a photograph of the peak through a solitary stone archway named Shershung. Around the peak were ranged high crags of black rock, so sheer they looked like ramparts upon which no ice could remain. In a few hours we passed the west face, stunningly close, appearing like an entity with arms stretched outwards, welcoming the world-weary pilgrim. We made our first camp soon afterwards, as pilgrims on ponies made their way in the distance. There was ice nearby, and we slept amid sounds of running water.
Soon we entered the stark valley that surrounds the mountain and passed by Choku Gompa on a cliffside, remote and barely visible. Kailash now appeared in full splendour. I took a photograph of the peak through a solitary stone archway named Shershung. Around the peak were ranged high crags of black rock, so sheer they looked like ramparts upon which no ice could remain. In a few hours we passed the west face, stunningly close, appearing like an entity with arms stretched outwards, welcoming the world-weary pilgrim. We made our first camp soon afterwards, as pilgrims on ponies made their way in the distance. There was ice nearby, and we slept amid sounds of running water.
The second day we walked to Drirapuk Gompa
at 16000 ft, one of the oldest monasteries in the region. We felt tired, as the
air had become thinner. It lies
opposite the supposedly fearsome northern face, that I did not experience as
fearsome. Throughout the trip, we saw Kailash clearly almost every day –
something for which many pilgrims would be immensely grateful. Tibetans revere
it as the residence of the tantric deity Demchog and his consort Dorje Phagmo
(Chakrasamavara and Vajravarahi); and call it Kang Rinpoche, or Snow Jewel. They also believe their poet saint
Milarepa spent several years here in meditation. For Hindus Kailash is the
manifestation of Meru, the spiritual centre of the universe and the abode of
Shiva and Parvati. For Jains, Kailash is known as Ashtapada, the place where
their founder, Tirththankar Rishabhadeva achieved enlightenment. For the Bons,
it is where their founder Shanrab descended from heaven. Bons walk the kora
counter-clockwise, unlike other pilgrims.
The last stage took us across the Dolma La
pass at 18,600 feet. It is a tough climb that we needed to complete by noon to
avoid blizzards. On the ascent we passed Shiva Sthal, where Tibetans leave
relics of the dead or their own blood. Nearer the top there is a rock reputed
to carry the footprint of Milarepa. The entire route is studded with sacred
sites, marked by chortens. There are no Shaivite temples along the way,
presumably because the entire area is considered sacred. On the way we mingled
with Tibetan pilgrims, as well as those from Europe and China. I also noticed
discarded phials of what may have been Tibetan medicine for altitude sickness.
When we reached the top, cold and
exhausted, we found an array of fluttering prayer flags, the older ones torn
and colourless. This is the highest point in the kora, nearest to the crest of
Kailash. Some pilgrims were performing shaastang pranaam, others reciting the
mantra: Om Mani Padme Hum. People
were laughing and crying with joy, greeting the mountain as if reconciled with
an old friend. It was an inspirational sight. I took some gulps of oxygen to
reduce my exhaustion – but I can’t say if it helped.
On the way down from Dolma La we saw Gauri
Kund from a height - the ‘lake of compassion’ that mythology tells us Shiva
created for Parvati, and where Ganesha acquired his elephant head. Someone had
placed a large amount of sindur on the rock from where we looked at it. It
looked deceptively close, and we decided not to go down. The path ahead now
took us over a glacier, river beds and dangerous rocky descents. After an
exhausting day we camped on the banks of the Lam Chu river that lies on the
eastern side of Kailash.
The fourth day was spent trekking back to
Darchen. We spent some time at Zutulpuk monastery, associated with Milarepa.
Towards the evening, we saw multi-coloured rocks in the gorge, and a Tibetan
girl handling a large flock of yaks all by herself, with stones and a loud
voice. Late evening was spent bathing (a luxury), eating a fresh meal
(vegetable chow made by a young Chinese couple in a small shed), and preparing
for departure.
It took four days getting back to Nepal. We
had entered Tibet from western Nepal, but exited in the east from the Kodari
border. Part of the journey was on a dirt-track beside the Tsangpo the Tibetan
name for the Brahmaputra. And there were other beautiful lakes to be admired. As
we approached the edge of the vast Tibetan plateau, the Himalayan peaks
appeared as if they were rising up slowly on a huge invisible platform. Then
came the descent into the border town of Zhangmu/Kodari
It is two years since we walked around the
sacred lake and the Snow Jewel Mountain. Whether Manasarovar is the reflex of
Brahma’s mind and Kailash the abode of Shiva or Chakrasamvara, I am in no
position to say. But these beautiful myths are appropriate to the beauty and
splendour of Manas and Kailash. My memories of that body of water, surging
sometimes like an ocean, at times still as a sheet of glass, light shimmering
outwards from its surface as if touched with a shower of diamonds, preserve a
sense of transcendent things. All the moods of life, all aspirations towards
serenity seem to reside here. So they did to me at any rate, as I sat alone on
its banks, bathed in sunlight on the last day of the kora, wondering how and
why I was here, an agnostic man in a place venerated by millions, where
devotees spent their most reflective moments, and some people still come to
die. And Kailash, always visible from the lake’s banks, towering above it, a
point of stillness in a spinning world.
There are indeed peaks that rise
higher. But this one conveys steadfastness, absolution and mystery. No one
knows if anyone has ascended it, save in myth. After I completed the kora,
despite my physical tiredness, I felt rested. Had I really beheld the jewel in
the lotus? The mountain and the water stay with me..
Om
Mani Padme Hum
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