ON the roof of the world at the end of the rainbow, a mountain of remote and desolate beauty lies trapped in a prism of spectacular light. It is known as Mount Kailash, earthly home of the gods for millions of followers of the four great Eastern religions, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Jains and the Bons.
This is Mount Meru, the invisible centre of their cosmology made visible, venerated as the most sacred place on Earth, shrouded in myth and legend and geographically almost impossible to reach. Yet for thousands of years this mountain has been the focus of the greatest and most dangerous pilgrimage on Earth. The extremes of temperature are such that it is said that one's arm exposed to the heat of the sun, may be scorched while one's feet, lying in the shadows, may at the same time be frost-bitten.
Accounts of the journey there reveal that the routes to this holy mountain are littered with the remains of those who did not make it, while the graveyards at its base are filled with the remains of those who did and died. The Tibet region has always been forbidden to foreigners and until 1983 only one Western woman, a Mrs Rutledge, is recorded as having visited the sacred area of Mount Kailash. In recent years, however, the Chinese have relaxed their restrictions and I decided to try to go there by the southern route from the Nepal-Tibet border.
The journey is a distance of 800 kilometres over unsurfaced road through unbridged rivers and streams and high mountain passes. On the day before the journey began, arrangements were finalised in a travel office in Kathmandu and the director introduced me to the members of the group who would travel with me. These included a Japanese advertising man, a German medical couple and a retired German woman.
All of them, I learned, unlike me, were experienced trekkers and mountain climbers. Indeed they looked as if they could cycle the 800 kilometres at 14,500 feet to the base of Mount Kailash and run up the 18,600-foot pass without any difficulty. What was even more disturbing was that the German doctor was actually going to take his mountain bicycle along to get in a bit of practice in at high altitudes. This news really shattered my self-confidence and I began to feel very nervous as my only preparation had been five circuits of Inishbofin at sea level the previous week.
"You are going to one of the most remote places on Earth," he said. "It takes more time to get rescued there." The facts were plain; one would not get rescued at all and I recalled the words of Lama Kalsang in a monastery in Nepal who first told me the story of the sacred mountain many years ago. "Remember," he said, "if you ever make that pilgrimage that those who did not merit to see the face of Mount Kailash will" never succeed."
We left Kathmandu by bus at dawn to travel the 120 kilometres to the Nepal-Tibet border where we cleared immigration and stayed overnight at the Zhangmu Hotel, a place renowned among travellers for its indifferent accommodation, unpredictable plumbing, rude staff and inedible food.
The journey for the next five days was physically harrowing but visually stunning. Our days were spent clinging to seat backs and arm rests for hours on end as the land-cruiser rolled and bounced at a crawling speed over weather-gouged terrain, paved with the rocky debris of dried lakes and river beds. The rivers that were not dry were in full flood and the drivers measured their safety by throwing stones in to gauge their depth or waiting for a nomad to show us the exact point at which the river was safe to cross.
The rivers and stony ground provided a break from eating the sand and dust thrown up in a constant cloud on the sections of dirt track which appeared from time to time. This dust penetrated everything. As we had no hot water to wash and the river water was too cold, it became layered on our skins and hair.
At night it fell from our clothes and luggage onto our sleeping bags so we slept, ate and lived dust for most of the 15 days. The dust was irrelevant by comparison with the physical effects of the cold. The temperature at night dropped to minus 10C and our tents began to freeze. In view of Matthias, the German doctors, lack of a proper sleeping bag, it became imperative to seek some other shelter against the intense cold so we opted for the local lodges.
The first of these was situated in Zhongbe, a depressing Chinese-built town of no architectural merit, situated about 3001 kilometres from the Nepal-Tibet border. Black pigs and small children wandered through muddy rain-logged streets, littered at intervals with garbage dumps. Our lodge was situated in an abattoir compound.
Carcasses of freshly-killed goat and sheep, dripping blood, hung in the sheds adjoining our rooms while lines of animal skins also dripping blood, hung all over the yard to dry. The "guest rooms" consisted of mud cabins with smoked-streaked walls, mud floors and roofs which had more ventilation than cover. Each room had four iron beds, a hair mattress and some bed-covers of questionable cleanliness. A Tibetan woman brought some yak-dung fuel and paraffin oil and we lit a fire in the simple rusty stove.
In the flicker of the firelight the graffiti of previous travellers revealed sentiments about Zhongbe that are too lewd to be repeated. Across the yard, the sherpas Ming-mar and Tashi cooked us dinner in conditions of hygiene where dirt, dust, termites, furry vegetables and anything else that flew or floated added to the general flavour of the food.
Only the Japanese man had any appetite. After consuming his obligatory tin of horse-meat from his provisions, much to the disgust of the vegetarians, he consumed everyone else's dinner. "Do you ever get ill?" I asked him, between the darts of pain in my constantly throbbing head. "No I am never ill, I am very strong and healthy," he replied.
That night we tried to sleep in our wind-swept shed between bouts of a thousand dogs barking at the full moon. In the morning Matthias pulled me aside and with a wicked grin informed me that the Japanese man was sick and had been defecating all night.
The next three days followed the pattern of the first two but finally we arrived, on the fifth evening, in Darchen, the base camp for our pilgrimage.
Next morning at dawn the yaks arrived, in a jumping jumble, in the courtyard. The luggage was loaded and the leading yak responded to kicks to his hind legs by sending the bags flying through the air. The other yaks tried to follow suit without success and our little group set out on the three-day walk around Tibet's most sacred mountain.
THE ritual pilgrimage route or Khora follows the deep valleys which encircle the base of Mount Kailash. Almost every inch of this 52-kilometre route is laced with shrines and holy places and spun with webs of myth and legend. Over the ages, weathered rock outcrops, glacial streams and oddly shaped boulders have acquired a spiritual significance and are worshipped as icons in themselves.
For the remainder of that first day a gale-force wind blew us along the valley to the Lha-chu river. We passed the sacred cemetery of Drachom Ngagye Durto with its strong stench of sky-burial corpses. springs with the water of eternal life shrines to female spirits or dakinis and caves of holy men.
Mount Kailash played its game of optical illusion revealing and concealing its snow-capped face behind screens of mountain ridges. When it was visible, plumes of snow, in gentle feathery ripples, floated from its icy mantle on the winds, creating tremors of movement around its otherwise stately pose. Unexpectedly, at Drira Phuk, it emerged totally from the shadows and revealed an unobstructed view of its north and most dramatic face. Its shape now was wide and pyramidal, so different from the cone and dome shapes that it had presented earlier.
Our lodge was a dirty, mud cabin with a timber bedding area, covered with filthy, torn, wool mattresses. Inge and I stacked these mattresses and swept the boards with a bunch of twigs, then we put mats and sleeping bags for the night. Outside the door, the Tibetan pilgrims camped in warm yak tents and sat around big, blazing fires.
I slept fit fully due to the scraping of the rats beneath our bed boards and the anxiety of facing the highest pass on the circuit shortly after dawn. At daybreak Mount Kailash looked monochrome and reposed until the first rays of the rising sun splashed it with blushes of shell pink. The nomads' fires were already blazing and big pots of tea were steaming into the freezing dawn air. Zhi Liang, our guide, offered yak transport to the summit of the high pass. At 18,600 feet I felt that I would need one but I also knew that yaks are notoriously temperamental and partial to patches of green grazing on distant mountains. So I opted for heart failure rather than a broken skull and decided to walk.
Besides, my travelling colleagues reminded me that there was a cemetery a couple of hours from camp and they would have to leave me there for sky burial if my heart gave out. For me, the climb was painfully slow and difficult but I practised breathing deeply and used the ritual stops as resting places on the way up.
I was relieved to find that I was still alive at the cemetery which is called Swatshal. It is said to be a replica of the fabled burial ground at Bodhgaya in India. Pilgrims are said to undergo a "ritual" death here in the presence of Dorje Jigje, Lord of Death, so all who pass here leave some memento of clothes or possessions before continuing to the high pass where they are said to be reborn.
Tibetan pilgrims, some old, some young, some carrying babies, but all fleet of foot sped up the mountain without difficulty. The trail zig-zagged past countless cairns and shrines and the last stretch was the steepest and strenuous of all. Yet, by some miracle, I managed to stagger onto the summit of the highest pass, headache-free for the first time in a week and jubilant that I was still breathing.
On the final day of our pilgrimage, Mount Kailash withdrew and we walked the battle-scarred path of the Kings of Good and Evil with an eastern Tibetan man called Thursday Moon a Hundred Stars. He pointed out the principle sights as the wind blew us towards the river's edge in the steep valley below. We learned that Gesar, the King of Good, eventually conquered Ghokar, the King of Evil.
We walked onwards towards our starting point in Darchen in the knowledge that the concerns of being human are universally the same. It is only the geographical locations that change.
How To GET THERE: Royal Nepal Airlines from Gatwick Airport, £585 return, twice weekly.
Mount Kailish Tour: Tibet Travels and Tours, Trideri Marg, Katmandu, Nepal. Tel: 212 130. Telex 2672.
Prices vary with size of group and can be negotiated with the agency.