When at last in view, Kailas is riveting. A single block of purple granite; cubic below pyramidal above, the 22,000’ (6,714 m) peak, streaked and capped with snow, bursts like a giant solitaire crystal, 12,000’ above its bezel of surrounding ranges.
Four lesser peaks like minarets frame Mount Kailas’ uncanny architecture. Each guards a corner, rounded as if worn by the universe turning on this jewelled bearing. Respecting its sacredness, defeated by its power, no climber has reached the summit.
We pause in a rocky amphitheatre where Gurdjieff filmed dreadlocked sadhus – wild “remarkable men” blowing chillums, sounding trumpets drums and conch shells under the annual ‘full moon of the guru’. One circuit of the mountain absolves a pilgrim’s sins.
Ascending glacial valleys on our orbit, we too meet other pilgrims. By archaic tradition Buddhists and Hindus walk clockwise with us. Bon Pa, the ancient animists come the other way. Beneath towering palisades of stone we camp in evening light, pale as frost.
In footsteps of saints we climb snow and ice to Dolma Pass (18,500’, 5,650m). Heavy laden I pant ten breaths for every step. Lungs crackle like cellophane. A snow squall rips at us. We creep across slippery glaciers falling bottle green to chaoses of moraine below.
The country is suddenly more rugged, wild and dangerous. Like foam lathering rabid jaws, snow splashes savagely in hound’s tooth patterns across massifs of purple and green. Wild weavers are at work. Untamed, untameable, The Furies rage.
Old Earth Goddess is hurling mountains about, heaving up ranges; smashing them down again like kneading bread. Strata fold like dough onto her board, like linen for her press. Strewing valleys with boulders, she cradles streams in the earth-bow of her wide arms.
Descending slippery screes, zigzagging down awful wastes of broken stone, we spy a derelict hut. Half full of snow it’s no less welcome shelter from the wind as night hardens. Morning is dazzling white; blistering cold.
Tiny specks, we venture cheekily along galleries of power for two more days of glorious walking. Such valleys, gouged wide by glaciers, transform the walker. This initiation is rigorous. Then sun shines out. New radiance surrounds us, flooding us within.
