Mount Kailash Kora

Mount Kailash is sacred to four religions and a deeply numinous place. Pilgrims throng to the mountain: not just Tibetans, but Hindus and Buddhists from India to Japan, joined by Western and Chinese travellers.

Everyone comes to Kailash to walk the kora, the sacred circuit around the mountain, which is probably the world's best walk. Many Tibetans do the kora in a single day; most foreigners take two to three days. Sharing the path with these pilgrims, often the simplest illiterate nomads who have saved for years to make the trip, is inspiring, whether or not you are a believer. You will meet a huge range of people here, including prostrators who will take three weeks to complete the circuit.

The kora starts at the charm-free village of Darchen, winding past mani walls and skirting the base of the Kailash massif. To the left, the huge, treeless Barkha plain is dotted with white nomadic tents and herds of sheep and goats.

At the first prostration point, the mountain's beautiful south face appears. The trail passes the famous Tarboche Flagpole and enters the extraordinary glacial Lha Chu valley, a flat, gravelly bottom receding between vast, sculpted red towers, broken crags and huge scree slopes.

Most trekkers will reach the Dira-Puk campsite at around 5,000m by mid-afternoon. Soaring, resplendent, above it is the famous north face, some 1,700m of banded rock and ice.

The second day trudges painfully through rough high valleys, past the Shiwa-tsal charnel ground, where pilgrims undergo a symbolic death, leaving an item of clothing (or hair, teeth or blood) to represent their renounced life, to the Drmla-la pass, festooned in prayer flags, at some 5,630m.

The kora then drops steeply past a turquoise sacred lake to a long, beautiful valley. Most hikers have a pleasant trudge in thickening air down to a campsite at the heavily grazed meadow of Zutul Puk, below a recently rebuilt monastery. They walk out into the open plain and back to Darchen the following morning.

From http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/asia_ref04.pdf