At the Mountain

At the base of Mt. Kailash lies the transient village of Darchen. It consists of a small Chinese-built hotel, a few Tibetan adobe buildings owned by traders and vendors, and a chaotic tent city of pilgrims from all over Tibet. I could see Mt. Kailash from more than 30 miles away as I rode across the great plain in front of the mountain. With a flat road and a strong wind at my tail it made for an easy ride. When I crossed the rivers and streams that came down from the snows of the Gangdise Mountain Range, hundreds of fish swam away in every direction. By the time that just five miles remained, I could see the village of Darchen at the base of the mountain. In the southwest, large black clouds from a thunderstorm moved straight toward the lone peak. I raced against the rain for the remaining portion of the road leading to Darchen. If caught riding in the heart of the storm, I would become soaked, and stood a good chance of becoming hypothermic. Once again the lesson I learned much earlier in the trip came back into my head, “every day is a struggle.” Even with only five miles to go, on mostly flat ground, it would not be an easy ride.

I knew that endless plates of hot food awaited me at Darchen but I also knew that a policeman would most likely accompany me at dinner. I had no other choice but to take my chances. I felt far too tired and hungry not to stop. As soon as I pushed my bike through the metal gates of the hotel, I started to look for the kitchen. A young Tibetan man and a older Chinese cook ran the kitchen. My journey astonished both of them but they gently told me that there would not be any meals for another hour. The wait for the rice, vegetables and steamed bread sped by quickly. I gorged myself on a few platefuls of food. Since only a dozen people resided in the hotel, it did not take long for the policeman to get word of my arrival, fortunately it happened after I had gotten a chance to stuff myself.

The policeman stationed at Darchen for the summer looked to be a small strong Tibetan man. We both walked back to the small hotel room where he lived with two other men. We sat down on the bed. He offered me a cup of tea and asked to see my passport. As he looked through my well-used passport he asked where I came from, and if I had been traveling by bicycle. When he heard that I cycled by myself on the “south road,” his face registered his disbelief. He had obviously traveled that road many times, but I think my ability to survive the difficult journey surprised him. “Do you have a special permit?” he asked. “No I am sorry I don’t.” “Then you will have to pay a fine, it will be 110 yuan,” he told me with a stern voice. I paid the fine of about US$20, I had no reason to argue. I again apologized for not having a Alien Travel Permit and got the money from my money belt to pay the fine. It was not possible to receive official permission to travel in Western Tibet, but for US$20 I covered the price of my fine and got a document stating that I could officially stay in the Kailash-Manasarovar area for the next two weeks. This temporary permit-fine was important, I knew that the next tough police checkpoint was in Ali, almost 200 miles to the northwest. As his assistant carefully wrote out the paperwork for my fine, the head policeman told me, “Under Chinese law I should have confiscated your bicycle, but I think that your bike is very valuable, so I will allow you to keep it. But you cannot ride your bike anymore. From this point on, you must put your bike in the back of trucks, until you get to Kashgar, where it is legal for foreigners to ride bicycles.” I politely agreed with what he requested of me and left to get a room for myself.

I had arrived in Darchen on the day before the full moon. More than a month before in Lhasa, I had met a Swiss German woman name Evon who was also headed to Mt. Kailash. She had told me that she would arrive there on the full moon of June. To make a kora on the 32-mile path around Mt. Kailash during the full moon has the same merit as walking the circuit three times on normal days. Evon had traveled to Kailash before and returned again this year to walk the kora on the full moon along with making pilgrimages to other sites in Western Tibet.

True to her word, Evon and a truckload of lively Westerners showed up. Once again, it pleased me to have a few other people to speak English with and exchange stories with. Some of the differences in our trips quickly because obvious. It seemed that almost all the problems on their journey had to do with getting their truck driver to go where they wanted to go and having all the members of their group get along with one another. On the other hand, my problems seemed to center around getting enough food to eat, staying alive and avoiding the police.

I first came to Mt. Kailash in the fall of 1992, after the summer pilgrim season. During 1992 the only foreigners permitted in Western Tibet traveled as part of US$15,000 tour groups. Since I traveled on my own with just a backpack, going into Darchen created too much of a risk for me. With a heavy pack that had to contain supplies and food for more than a week, I took four days to travel the 32-mile path around the mountain. Most of the Tibetans who walk the kora make the trip in under 24 hours. In Tibetan, walking this 32-mile trail in less than 24 hours is referred to as a “dog kora.” Evon told me how just a week before she also walked the kora in a single day.

After a day of rest in Darchen, Lauren, a woman from San Francisco, and I woke up at the ridiculous hour of five in the morning. We both bundled ourselves in heavy hats and gloves. Even in June, the nighttime temperatures at 15,500 feet [4725 meters] drop below freezing. We made our way out of the hotel gate, on to the beginning of the path. The illuminated disk of the full moon shown out over the plain to the southwest. A couple of other foolhardy pilgrims stood silhouetted in the moonlight up ahead of us on the trail. With our small flashlights and the brilliant light of the full moon we worked our way down the stone covered pathway.

Like many times before on this trip I became part of something ancient, something that transcended my lifetime and the lifetimes of everyone whom I had ever known. I walked the same path that Milarepa, the great Tibetan saint who helped firmly establish Buddhism in Tibet in the eleventh century, had walked. The same path that Sven Hedin walked in 1907 to became the first Westerner to make the kora around Mt. Kailash. I myself traveled this identical path two years before, as a solitary pilgrim in the beginning of winter in Western Tibet.

As we walked on the west side of Kailash, steep canyon walls came up around us, shielding us from a view of the peak and the great valley to the south. As I walked past the large boulder that I had slept behind two years before. I recalled images of myself huddled under a thin sheet of plastic, while snow fell during the night, not knowing if I would suffer the same fate as a British traveler who froze to death while walking the kora a few years before.

Ever since my return from my first trip to Mt. Kailash, I would occasionally pose a question to my friends back in the USA, “What are the places of pilgrimage in this country?” Over and over it seems the most common answers I received were Disney Land, Disney World, and Graceland. Somehow these do not seem like appropriate answers. Infrequently a friend answer with, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon or the great wilderness areas of Montana and Alaska. In large part the USA is not a land of journeys of the spirit, but rather a land of immense material wealth.