Mount Kailash

• 1. Introduction

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  Mount Kailash rises to an elevation of 6638 m in Ngari Prefecture, in the western part of the Tibetan Plateau. It belongs to the Gangdise Shan, also called the Kailash Range, a part of the Transhimalaya. The peak stands near the western trijunction where China, India and Nepal meet.

  Few mountains carry as many names. In Sanskrit it is Kailasa, a word that may come from kelasa, meaning crystal. Tibetans call it Gang Rinpoche, the snow jewel mountain. Gang is the Tibetan word for a white snow peak, and rinpoche is an honorific meaning the precious one. Locally it is also known as Gang Tise, which means mountain of ice or cool. It also appears as Kangrinboqê.

  Bon texts add names of their own, including Water's Flower, Mountain of Sea Water and Nine Stacked Swastikas Mountain. Followers of Bon, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism all hold the peak sacred, and pilgrims arrive from China, India, Nepal and other countries of the region.

  Why do so many rivers begin around one mountain? What does each faith believe happened on its slopes? Why do some pilgrims walk around it in one direction and others in the opposite direction? And what keeps people from setting foot on it?

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• 2. Rivers and Rock

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  Within a single 60 km stretch of the western Gangdise Mountains, four major river systems begin. They are the Yarlung Tsangpo, which becomes the Brahmaputra, the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Ghaghara, a tributary of the Ganges. Kailash stands on the banks of Manasarovar and Rakshastal lakes. Manasarovar spreads across 320 km2 and is the highest freshwater lake in the world.

  The ground beneath the mountain holds an older story. The surrounding region preserves remnants of large ice sheets from the Quaternary period. The last of those sheets retreated about 10,000 years ago.

  The mountain itself is made of thick conglomerate rock sitting on granite. The visible conglomerate runs from 4700 m up to the summit, while its base lies deeper inside the mountain. One idea holds that the whole peak is a large block of altered sedimentary rock carried on a granite base.

  Nearby, the headwaters of the Indus run through widely faulted rock. Some of it is marine limestone, laid down on the southern margin of the Asian block while Tethys oceanic crust was being pushed beneath it. That happened before the Indian and Asian continents collided.

  The Kailash flysch zone extends about 20 km from the mountain. It is made of alternating areas of peridotites, sandy shales and dolomites, covered by gravel terraces. This zone marks the northern end of the Himalayas and the start of the Trans Himalayas.

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• 3. Buddhist and Bon Stories

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  Padmasambhava, who is credited with establishing Tantric Buddhism in Tibet in the 8th century CE, is linked to numerous sites in the region. Buddhist texts describe Kailash as the mythological Mount Meru, and it sits at the centre of their cosmology. In this view the mountain stands for the father of the world, and Lake Manasarovar symbolizes the mother.

  Around the year 1052, according to Vajrayana Buddhists, the saint Milarepa faced a challenge from Naro Böncham, a follower of the Tibetan religion of Bön. The two matched wits, and neither gained a decisive advantage. They agreed that whoever reached the summit of Kailash first would be the victor.

  Naro sat on his magic drum to climb the slope. Milarepa reached the top by riding on the rays of the Sun, and so he won. He then gave the nearby mountain, since known as Bönri, to the followers of Bön.

  For the Bon people, Kailash is the abode of the sky goddess Sipaimen. They also hold that it was the centre of the ancient Bon empire of Zhang Zhung.

  Tibetan belief goes further and makes the mountain the centre of the universe Mandala. From it flowed the mythical Lion, Horse, Peacock and Elephant Rivers, each running toward one of the four cardinal directions.

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• 4. Shiva and the Tirthankaras

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  Shiva is the god Hindu art and literature place on Kailash, where he lives with his consort Parvati and their children, Ganesha and Kartikeya. Early Hindu depictions treated Kailash as one mountain among the Himalayas. Later theology identified it with Meru. The Vishnu Purana places Meru at the centre of the world, ringed by six mountain ranges like the petals of a lotus. The Himalayas are one of those ranges. Meru is also called a stairway to heaven, where the devas reside.

  Scriptures and sculptures tell of the demon-king Ravana, who was refused entry to Kailash and shook the mountain in anger. Shiva pressed his toe onto the slope and trapped Ravana beneath it. Ravana sang hymns of praise to Shiva for a thousand years before he was freed. This image of Shiva is called Ravananugraha, meaning the form showing favour to Ravana.

  Jain scriptures name Rishabhadeva, the first Tirthankar of Jainism, as the one who attained moksha, or liberation, on Mount Kailash. His son, the emperor Bharata Chakravartin, then had three stupas and twenty-four shrines to the 24 tirthankaras built in the region. Their idols were studded with precious stones, and he named the place Sinhnishdha. Bharata also performed a fortnight of worship called Mahamaga and attained moksha from Kailash himself. Later, large pits were dug around the mountain, and the River Ganges was made to flow through them.

  The 24th and last Tirthankara, Mahavira, appears in a Jain account as well. Indra carried the newborn Mahavira to the summit of Meru after putting his mother into a deep slumber. There the infant was anointed with precious unctions.

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• 5. The Kora

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  The path around Mount Kailash is 53 km long. Hindus, Buddhists and Jains walk it clockwise, while the Bönpos circle the mountain counterclockwise. The walk usually begins and ends at Darchen, a small outpost at 4670 m. Its highest point is the Drölma pass, at 5650 m.

  On average the circuit takes three days, on foot or with a pony or domestic yak for support. The first day covers about 14 km from Darchen to the Dirapuk gompa. On the second day pilgrims go 19 km from Dirapuk to Zutulphuk, crossing the Drölma pass. The final day brings them back to Darchen.

  In Tibetan Buddhism the most extreme way to make the circuit is called the Kora. The pilgrim does full body-length prostrations over the whole stretch around the mountain. She bends down, kneels, stretches out flat and marks the ground with her fingers. Then she rises to her knees, prays, and crawls forward on hands and knees to the mark before starting again. Done this way, the pilgrimage takes about three weeks.

  Pilgrims believe the circuit cleanses sins, and that each circuit fulfils one life-death cycle. Hindus take a ritual bath in Manasarovar before they begin. The Skanda Purana says: "There are no mountains like the Himalaya, for in them are Kailas and Manasarovar. As the dew is dried up by the morning Sun, so are the sins of mankind dried up by the sight of the Himalaya."

  Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims often chant Om mani padme hum, which means jewel in the lotus. At the Dolma La pass they also sing nyelu songs, which are believed to proclaim a fraternity among all pilgrims who cross paths on the route.

  Stupas, flag poles, monasteries and praying stations line the way. Many cultural artifacts along the route were destroyed during China's Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976. Facilities are very few in this remote corner of the Himalayas, and even reaching Darchen has long depended on border agreements.

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• 6. Borders and Permits

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  Nobody knows when the first pilgrim set out for Mount Kailash, but it is counted among the oldest pilgrimage routes. Pilgrimage grew in the 1930s. It was later disrupted when both China and the British Empire claimed the region.

  After China occupied Tibet in 1950-51, it permitted religious pilgrimages to Kailash and Manasarovar. The 1954 Sino-Indian Agreement guaranteed pilgrimage from India. Access was restricted after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, and the borders were closed after the Sino-Indian War in 1962. Pilgrimage from India was allowed again in 1981, after an agreement between the two governments.

  Before the closure in 2020, several thousand Indian pilgrims were making the annual yatra. COVID-19 then suspended the pilgrimage for three years. The route reopened in 2023 with new regulations.

  Since 2015, Indian pilgrims have had to apply in advance to the Ministry of External Affairs. A set number of passes is issued by computerized random selection, with preference given to first-timers. The Government of India organizes the pilgrimage, and it is permitted between June and September.

  Two routes cross the border. One goes over the Lipu Lekh pass in Uttarakhand, and since 2020 a motorable road reaches it through the Indian side of the Mahakali valley. The other goes over the Nathu La pass, which was opened in 2015 and involves travelling to Gangtok first.

  From Nepal, the pilgrimage since 2015 has commonly gone through the Humla district in the northwest. The April 2015 Nepal Earthquake closed the Tatopani-Zangmu border crossing. Another route runs through the Rasuwa-Gyirong crossing, and some pilgrims reach Lhasa by air before travelling on to Lake Manasarovar or Darchen.

  Pilgrims also pray to the mountain from inside Nepal. On a clear day it can be seen from the Lapcha La pass above the Limi valley.

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• 7. The Unclimbed Peak

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  In 1926, Hugh Ruttledge, the deputy commissioner of Almora, travelled to meet the Garpön, the local Tibetan leader of Ngari. The Garpön was away, so Ruttledge walked around Mount Kailash while studying it. He judged the mountain to be about 6000 m high and utterly unclimbable, though he considered an ascent along the northeast ridge.

  Colonel R. C. Wilson was exploring the other side of the mountain with a Sherpa named Tseten. Wilson wrote that Tseten told him the southeast ridge was a feasible route. Wilson explained that they attempted the climb but met heavy snowfall that made an ascent impossible.

  Herbert Tichy came in 1936 and tried to climb the mountain. When he asked local people whether Kailash could be climbed, a Garpön answered: "Only a man entirely free of sin could climb Kailash. And he wouldn't have to actually scale the sheer walls of ice to do it - he'd just turn himself into a bird and fly to the summit."

  In the mid-1980s the Chinese government gave the Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner a chance to climb the peak. He reportedly declined, saying: "If we conquer this mountain, then we conquer something in people's souls. I would suggest they go and climb something a little harder."

  In 2001 a Spanish team asked for permission and was refused. Chinese authorities stated that any climbing on Mount Kailash is strictly prohibited. No successful ascent has been recorded, and for varied reasons among the faiths that revere it, setting foot on its slopes is forbidden by law.

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• 8. A Warming Plateau

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  People who live around Mount Kailash say the land has been growing warmer in recent years, with winters less cold than they used to be. The weather is fairly dry from April to June. Temperatures start to fall in October, and January is the coldest month, with nights reaching as low as -20 °C. Monsoons bring rain and cold winds from late June to August.

  Warming on the Tibetan Plateau is described as happening three times faster than the global average, by about 0.3 C per decade. Winters bring less snowfall. Retreating glaciers and thawing permafrost may have uncertain effects on the region's water resources.

  These pressures combine with a growing population and with tourism, and together they strain the fragile ecosystem around the mountain.

  The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, an intergovernmental organisation known as ICIMOD, is working across borders here. Its Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation and Development Initiative is generating climate data and devising sustainable ways of life for the people of the region.

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