Parikrama -Day1

 

17^th June – Parikrama Begins: Darchen – Tarboche - Diraphuk

There is no temple at Kailash / Manasarovar. The Kailash Mountain itself is the Shiva Lingam. A circambulation or Parikrama ( or Kora in Tibetan) is performed around the mountain. This covers 52 Kms which is done over 3 days. The Kora starts from Yama Dwar or the gate of the God of Death. The first 8 kms till Tarboche is done on the vehicle, thereafter it is a trek or on the horse. 20Kms are covered on the first day which is mostly over level ground. The second day's trek is the toughest - a total of 22 Kms which involves steep climb over snow, then a steep descent over snow and over treacherous boulders. The remaining journey on the third day is again mostly level, except for a portion which is very narrow, with a cliff on your right and a steep deep gorge on your left.
A parikrama of the Manasarovar lake is also performed. This is 125 kms and is entirely done by the vehicle.

Yama Dwar

Kailash seen from Yama Dwar

The next morning we started off early after breakfast and proceeded to Yama Dwar. This is a small temple like gate through which one must pass before starting off the Parikrama. Yama is the God of Death. We symbolically pass through the gates of death before we can come closer to Lord Shiva who is Mrityunjaya, the immortal one. This is the starting point of the Parikrama.

The initial 8 Km of the Parikrama is by the vehicle. We boarded back our Land Cruisers and were driven to Tarboche. The parikrama starts on foot / horse from this point.

We waited for quite some time here for our tour manager to arrive. We were waiting to be assigned our porters and horses.  The sky was turning overcast and we started getting worried about the prospect of facing rain / hail on the initial day itself.

There was some commotion when the tour manager arrived and he asked the group to queue up. The Chinese guide came up with a hat full of chits containing the name of the porters. The porters were assigned to those of us who had requested for it by drawing lots. I was assigned a Tibetan man whose name I heard as Mr. Poorpo.

Next we queued up for the horse and horse owners were assigned in a similar fashion by drawing lots. My horse owner was a young lady whose name I heard as Tsang Min Ma.

We were asked to preserve the chits containing the porter name and horse owner name (written in Tibetan). This would help the Chinese guide locate them if we lost track of them.

Parikrama Starts - Valley of gods

Base of Kailash see during Parkirama.
Rest of the mountain is hidden in clouds

A Tibetan man performing sashtang Parikrama

Lower reaches of Mt Kailash seen from
Diraphuk guest house

All of us soon boarded our horses and proceeded towards Diraphuk, 12 km away, 16500 ft. People who wanted to do the Parikrama on foot had already started off. The first day’s Parikrama is the easier one and can be done entirely on horse. Doing it on the horse however does not mean you can speed away. The reign of the horse remains in the hands of the horse owner and she walks in front of the horse. The porter also walks in parallel. So you can go only as fast as a Tibetan Sherpa can walk on that terrain (which is much faster than how you would make it if you were on foot).

Midway through the journey there is a stretch where the North face of Kailash is visible. This is usually covered with clouds, but we were lucky to have a clear darshan at this point. Also a Trishul like formation of snow was seen near the top of Kailash. This energized the devotees.

Though there is hardly any vegetation cover, but all along the terrain is truly breathtaking. The snow peaks all around, the waterfalls and the semi glacial river flowing next to the trail makes you feel like it’s the pathway to heaven. We stopped for a few minutes for a snack en-route and also for the horse to take some rest. We had been given a packed lunch consisting of sandwiches, biscuits, chocolates etc which I shared with my porter and horse owner.
We noticed a few Tibetans performing sashtanga Kora. The person prostrates himself, puts a mark at the point till his head has reached, gets up and prostrates again. He would cover the entire circambulation of 52 Kms in this manner. All of us except three resolute trekkers ended up using a horse at some stage. We were wondering how could a person do this over snow and over boulders! Hats off to the devotion of that man!
 

It was raining heavily by the time we made it to the Diraphuk guest house. The weather had turned chilling cold and an icy strong wind added to our woes. All the high mountains right next to us were covered with snow and the visibility was sharply reduced.

My fever was back with vengeance by this time and I was trembling partly due to being cold and wet and partly due to fever. I quickly removed the wet clothes and changed over to the dry ones I was carrying in the backpack and collapsed into the blanket.


Next >> Parikrama - Day 2