by Ray Kreisel
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.
As the trail starts to turn to the east, the valley opens up exposing the rich deep blue sky. At this point the trail starts the ascent up the 18,600-foot [5670 meter] Drolma La Pass on the north side of Mt. Kailash. Just after the trail turned to the east, we stopped in a small yak wool tent where a Tibetan man sold hot tea and noodles to passing pilgrims. When I walked the kora two years before, I found no such luxuries. Arriving at the beginning of winter, I only saw a couple of other pilgrims during the entire four days that I walked the kora. Half a dozen other hungry and thirsty pilgrims crowded in to the tent. All the noodles and fuel for the fire had to be carried in on the back of a person or a yak, so even a cup of boiled water cost a few cents but both Lauren and I happily paid for this luxury.
A quarter mile farther on you can start to see the sheer rock wall of the north face of Mt. Kailash. When snow hangs on the edges of this face, you can see the lines that make up Lord Shiva’s dreadlocks. At the base of the north face lies a small stone pilgrim hut where I slept before with two old Tibetan men. I felt like I moved in fast-forward. In just half a day I had already traveled what consumed two long days of walking previously.
Midway up the climb to the Drolma La Pass lies Shiwa Tsal. For a few hundred feet [50 meters] in every direction clothing covers all the rocks and boulders. The Tibetans who pass this place will leave a piece of clothing or hair from a sick friend, a family member or themselves. When these physical objects are left at this special site, it will create good merit or good karma for the owner of the object. A subtle link is established with the mountain. So, when you look out over the surrounding rock pile, there are shirts, pants, pieces of fabric, and hair covering almost every rock. I pulled out a few strands of my own hair and placed it down between two of the rocks. I knew that I could use all of the help and good merit that I could get.
During the last part of the climb up the Drolma La Pass, the trail turns into a staircase-like path that climbs steeply. Since I had cycled at high altitude for the last few months and I did not carry a backpack, climbing up the Drolmala seemed pretty straightforward for me. A large rock covered with prayer flags and offerings marks the top of the Drolmala Pass. When I spotted the prayer flags, once again I felt happy to be alive for yet one more day, I stopped in front of the rock and like thousands of pilgrims before me, I did three prostrations to the mountain that connects this physical world to the spirit world. Before I left the USA a friend had given me a small yellow seashell to remind me of California and to protect me during my travels. I placed the shell on the rock alongside hundreds of other offerings from the pilgrims who had come before me. I took a few moments to think about Jay and his 15-year-long wish to make a pilgrimage to Mt. Kailash, I was thankful for the aid that he had provided me with and grateful that he helped enable me to complete my pilgrimage to this mountain. Lauren arrived a few minutes later, we both needed a break and some food to give us strength for the next 15 miles of walking.
Just down from the Drolma La lies the frozen Lake of Compassion. At 18,400 feet [5609 meters] it is one of the highest lakes in the world. This small lake, which remains frozen for most of the year, marks a sacred place where some pilgrims will immerse their bodies three times in order to become more compassionate or merciful. I am such a wimp, when it comes to cold water, that I have never succeeded in convincing myself to actually break a hole through the thin ice, take my clothes off and plunge my body under the water.
Just past the lake I spotted a pilgrim prostrating around Mt. Kailash. He wore a rough cut leather apron and crude leather mitts to protect his body and hands. Tan dirt stained his forehead from daily prostrations. For the entire kora he would make a prostration and then walk forward two or three feet [1 meter] to the point where his hands and head had just touched the earth and then start over with another prostration. In this way he slowly made his way around the 32-mile circuit taking a week or more to complete the course.
We continued to pick our way through the boulder field, moving down, losing altitude quickly. I knew I had completed about half of the 32-mile walk, when my body started to feel the first 15 miles. Once we cleared the boulder field, the trail turned south and followed a straight southerly course, along a clear flowing river. I could feel my body growing weaker, after all, this was supposed to be my day off. I laid down in a small grassy section near the river to wait for Lauren, and within a couple minutes I had dozed off. With a great amount of reluctance I finally stood up and continued to move on closer to Darchen. To keep moving I followed the example of all the pilgrims around me and started to recite “Om Mani Padme Hum,” the most powerful Tibetan mantra of Chenresig, the Buddha of boundless compassion. The Dalai Lama is the living incarnation of Chenresig, a Buddha that practices objectless loving-compassion, kindness equally directed toward all living beings. This mantra translates to “The Jewel of the Lotus Flower,” which refers to the teachings of the Buddha, or the “jewel.” The mantra gave me a rhythm to breath to and walk to, it allowed me to keep moving on and on.
Fourteen hours and 32-miles after we started, Lauren and I dragged our aching feet in to Darchen. In our exhausted and thirsty stupor we walked into a tent set up in the courtyard of the hotel. Inside the tent a young Tibetan woman sold cups of sweet tea and cans of soda. At the front stood a VCR hooked up to a TV powered by a small g
asoline generator. When we walked in, Tom Cruise spoke in dubbed Chinese as the movie “Top Gun” played. The images and culture of the Western world were starting to impact even the most remote reaches of Western Tibet.
One of the women who worked in the hotel told me that the police had taken a couple day trip down to Purang at the Nepal border. With the police gone for a few of days, I figured it was a good time to get out of Darchen, especially if I wanted to ride my bike out of town instead of putting it in the back of a truck. For the first time in a while, I cycled on a road that I had traveled before. The familiarity of the bumps and turns of the road made traveling the route to Ali a little easier.
After a couple days I got back into the rhythm of riding all day by myself. I had traveled the roads of China and Tibet for more than three months but it seemed as if a year of my life had gone by. I tried to think about my friends back at home and what events they had lived through in the last couple months. I know for them it had just been a couple of paychecks, a few new movies, or maybe a change of seasons. I knew that if I was to be transported home after only three months that everyone would tell me how it seemed like I just left a couple weeks before. Time passed in a vastly different way for me when I spent ten hours a day feeling every bump on the washboard dirt roads of Western Tibet.
There was nothing special about coming around a turn in the road to see a Chinese army camp, but when I saw three people sitting at the main gate with backpacks next to them I knew that there was something out of the ordinary going on. The stretch of road from Mt. Kailash to Ali is not one in which even Tibetans usually stop. Once I pulled over, I learned that Damien and Dominique lived in France and Ray in Hong Kong. The French couple had sailed from France to the South Pacific by hitching rides on small 30-to-40-foot [10 to 15 meter] sailboats. They were on an extended trip around the world. When she was back in France, Dominique had drawn inspiration from one of the same books that had inspired me, Sorrel Wilby’s Journey Across Tibet. This book told the tale of a young Australian woman in her twenties who walked 1800 miles across Western Tibet in 1987. When I met them they had just finished walking a 150-mile portion of the same journey that Sorrel had made. They had followed the Indus River southward from Ali, heading toward Mt. Kailash.
During our conversation I mentioned something about the problems I had with dogs along the road, especially in Drongba. When Dominique heard of my problems she told me of a horrific incident that happened to her in Shigatse. For one reason or another, Dominique had been walking alone outside town at 2 A.M. As she strolled down the road, a pack of wild dogs started to surround her in the darkness. She stood far from any Tibetan homes, and only a single light shown far in the distance. The dogs moved closer and closer until they finally started attacking her legs. She tried to beat them off as she ran down the road. After more than half a dozen dogs bit through her pants and into her flesh she finally escaped from the angry pack. A short while later she arrived at the building where she had earlier observed the single light. Upon walking inside, she realized that the dogs had shredded her pants, leaving her with practicality no clothing below her waist and at least 15 different bites that had punctured her skin. The people in the building gave her a pair of extra pants so she could return to the hotel room where Damien anxiously awaited her arrival, wondering why she had not returned much earlier.
The next day, they went to the medical clinic in Shigatse. When they finally tracked down a doctor, he assured them that there had not been any documented cases of rabies in the area where Dominique had been attacked, but in Sakya, which lies only 100 miles to the south, there had been a few cases. The doctor advised them to return to Lhasa where they would be able to find the rabies vaccine. The problem with rabies is that once you are bitten there is about a 7-to-10-day window before the symptoms develop. If you receive the vaccine before the symptoms develop then you should be okay. Otherwise, if you see any sign of the symptoms it is too late and because no known cures exist, death will follow shortly. So, this means that even if there is a remote chance that a rabid dog bit you it is advisable to get the rabies vaccine. But, like everything else in China and Tibet, resources are often difficult if not impossible to find. The doctors at the main hospital in Lhasa told them it might be possible to locate the vaccine in Lhasa, but to be sure they should get on the next plane to Beijing where they would be guaranteed to find the vaccine. Neither Dominique nor Damien wanted to fly all the way to Beijing. They took their chances and spent the next couple days tracking down the vaccine in Lhasa. Finally after a long and protracted search they located a full course of the vaccine. The doctor showed Damien how to administer the injections to Dominique and off they went. When I met them in Western Tibet, only the fifth and final injection remained.
The ability of my bike to withstand the never-ending pounding that I put it through pleased me. So far I had replaced a couple of the bolts that held the front rack in place, the constant shaking had sheared the steel bolts in half. I also patched a few tires and tightened most every nut and bolt on the bike at least a few times. So when I felt something wrong in my right pedal it did not surprise me. I pulled my bike off to the side of the sandy track that I rode on and broke out my tool bag. When I put pressure on the pedal and turned it, I could feel something broken inside, it did not turn evenly or smoothly. I removed the dust cover on the end of the dirty pedal and proceeded to open up the bearings. As I turned the pedal up on end to dump the bearings into my hand, I saw the fractured and broken bearings shine in the brilliant sunlight. While I cleaned the remaining bearings, I accidentally knocked a couple in the sand beneath me. I cringed as I realized that there was no possible way of recovering the bearing from the fine sand that I sat on. Carefully I put the few bearings that I had back into my tool bag and hoped that my one and only chance for a successful repair would work. Before I left the USA I made sure to purchase a complete set of bearings for the headset. I had no idea if the pedals used the same sized bearings or not. When I held two of the bearings side by side and saw that they were identical a giant smile stretched across my face as I laughed to myself. I carefully put the pedal back together with the new bearings and continued on my way.
Meeting Mr. Lee
From Mt. Kailash the road to Ali follows the path of the powerful Indus River, making drinking water relatively easy to find. I recalled from my previous trip that the road made a sharp turn to the east just before it reached the town of Ali. My supply of water was starting to run low, but I thought that I was close to Ali and would just wait until I reached the town. After a couple hours of building thirst, I double-checked my maps and unfortunately learned that it was 20 miles more to Ali after the road turned to the east, not just 5 miles like I had previously thought. The map seemed to indicate that it was a ways before the road got closer to a river again. I started into my typical pattern of constantly scanning the horizon for any signs of water, vegetation, changes in the color of the sand and rock, reflections of small ponds, any kind of clue to indicate the existence of drinkable water. As the hours and miles went by, my thirst became more and more incapacitating, making it difficult to continue. If I stopped I would not be able to make any noodles because I did not carry enough water to cook with. I had to push on so that I could rehydrate myself and make some food to eat. I stopped and rested when I had a chance, inching my way closer to Ali. After hours of struggling with no drinking water in sight, I finally broke down and decided that I would stop the next truck that came by and ask for a ride into town. This marked a major psychological step for me since I had never taken a ride on this trip before, but I could barely move on. Once I made the decision, a few minutes later a truck came down the road, unfortunately it traveled away from Ali. Somehow the driver of the truck must have sensed that something was wrong. The man stopped and asked if I was doing all right. When I asked him if he had any extra drinking water he tossed me a can of Chinese orange soda pop. I gratefully thanked him for what he could spare. We said our good
byes and then moved on. The small amount of soda gave me a little more energy. With that I continued to crawl closer to Ali. Not too much later another truck came down the road, this time headed toward Ali. I flagged down the truck. The driver stopped, and I asked if he could take me into Ali. The truck driver knew that Chinese law forbid him from carrying foreigners in his truck, and he did not want to risk losing his license and his job. I asked if he could spare some water. One of the passengers had a little extra water that he poured into a partially full beer bottle from the floor of the truck. What a welcome treat. Once again I gained a small amount of energy and continued to move on.
From my maps I knew that a river flowed just north of the road but that could range anywhere from ¼ mile to 4 miles away. The terrain out to the north consisted of small sand dunes standing from 10 to 20 feet [3 to 7 meters] high making it difficult to spot a river that I knew flowed only a few yards wide. I had been “running on empty” for the last few hours. At a point right before the road started to turn south again, I decided that I could not go on. I started walking north in search of water. Just 60 feet [20 meters] off the road I stashed my bike behind a group of small bushes, but even carrying my bike that short distance through the sand required an immense amount of energy. I gathered all of my water bottles and my trusty water filter for the journey on foot. I made mental notes of the major landmarks near my bike and then started off on a straight line that I thought followed the shortest route to where I hoped to find the river. I could not afford to waste time and energy circling my way through the sand dunes. I slowly made my way up and down the dunes and through the sand marking an easy trail for me to find my way back to my bike. My body ran on auto-pilot as I walked like a zombie across the desert. I could just barely manage to keep my feet moving forward, hoping that I would find something to drink. After about 20 minutes of lethargic walking, I saw a small river of rippling water. I rejoiced in finding the fluid that would bring me back to life and knelt at the edge of the water to filter my first drink. It did not take long to fill my belly with water. I continued to filter more water for the other bottles, and by the time I finished my dehydrated body craved another quart of water. I was thankful to have this essential component of life coursing through my being again.