Dad's little adventure

Today, my father returned from his pilgrimage to Kailas-Manas Sarovar, and I've been jumping around all day, tremendously escited and delighted to see dad after over a month. Here's what he had to say about his trip, in his own words (well... more or less his own words):


We arrived in Kathmandu at 4.30 in the afternoon, and checked into our rooms. In spite of the heavy rain, we managed to take the Mountain-air flight, which offers a splendid aerial view of the Himalayan range, Mt. Everest included, as it flies past them. As luck would have it, I got the seat right above the wing of the little airplane. However, I got to take a few pictures from the cockpit. It's awesome... Those gigantic mountains seemed intimidatingly close, and breathtakingly beautiful. If anyone had asked me, or any of us, to describe how we felt, the answer would've been "Top of the world...Literally!"

Once we got back to Kathmandu, we went to the Pashpathinath temple. We tried to hire a vehicle to Swayambhunath, but because of the incessant rain, we couldn't do anything but sit around and talk.

The next day, we left the hotel at 3 a.m. and set off towards Nylam, China. We got off at Kodari, a tiny Nepali village on the Sino-Nepal border. After getting our visas, and some sort of laser-stamping on our foreheads, we crossed the Friendship Bridge and walked into China. The land cruisers that would take us to Manas Sarovar were there, waiting for us. It was an extremely hot day, and the road was very, very bad. However, the beauty all around seemed to make up for the sweat, dust and backache- A raging river on one side, and towering mountains on the other.

It was a little past 7 p.m. when we reached cold, rainy Nylam. Seeing that the rooms allotted to us were pathetic, we decided to find ourselves a decent place to spend the night. This turned out to be a lot harder than we'd expected, as none of knew Chinese, and the none of the locals spoke even a modicum of English, let alone any Indian language. But we managed, all right... using a variety of hand gestures, bodily actions and a calculator (to haggle over the room rent).

In the morning, we found that there was no water to bathe in. When we asked the girl at the Reception (we had to mime out our request. It was a little embarrassing, but there wasn't much else we could do), she led us to a tap a short distance away from the hotel. She turned it on. Nothing came out but a deep, gurgling sound. She pointed to the tap, then at her watch, then held up nine of her fingers. Water at 9 o'clock. It was 6 o'clock then! Later that morning, we went for a preliminary fitness trek. We spent the rest of the day climbing, sliding down glaciers and having snowball fights.

The next day, we drove across a blistering desert, past pastures and bleak, featureless plains in the midst of bare, rocky mountains, and reached Saga in the evening. We stayed there for the night. In the morning, we left for Paryang. The drive, scenic but bumpy, was long and tiring. When we reached Paryang, we saw that our rooms were filthy, musty and all but falling apart. There were almost no toilets... It cost me 10 Yuvans (that's like 60INR) to find myself a potty!


We left Paryang at 9. 30 the next morning, and drove to Manas Sarovar. I was absolutely thrilled when I saw the famed Lake and Mt. Kailas. I was surprised too, for I had never even imagined that at the sight of Manas, my eyes would well up, or that my arms would be covered with goose bumps (though that may just be because of the sold, relentless wind). To be there, under the clear sky, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, with the vivid blue lake before me was an experience that simply refuses to let itself be put down in words.

We drove around the Lake once before going to a nearby place called Dolpa. I got to bathe in a hot-water spring, much to my delight. There's another stream here. People say the stars (nakshathra devatas) come down here at dawn to bathe. Everyone says 'miracles' such as this one are very common around here. However, we saw no such happenings. Maybe miracles don't happen in bad weather.

I tried to take a picture of Kailas at sunrise, but it was terribly cloudy. We went to the Lake, performed some pujas, then proceeded to Darchen. The trek around Kailas (parikrama) starts here, at a small doorway right in the middle of nowhere, called Yamadwara.

We were to start our parikrama the next morning. It had been so cold in the night that all the water we had had turned into ice. Even the streams had frozen over. Manas alone remained unaffected, rippling blue in the chilly wind. Almost as soon as we got up, we learned that 13 members of our group (of 40) were ill, four of them critically so. All four had had heart attacks, and one of them had pulmonary edema. They were transported to the Saga hospital in a helicopter, with much difficulty and at an unbelievable price.

Once this was done, we started climbing. We went over 5 km up on the rock-strewn path, past frozen rivers, mountain springs and glaciers. The landscape was bleak- bare and colourless- in an appealing sort of way. At around 24,000 ft above sea level, at seven degrees Celsius below zero, every step ahead seemed a victory, every breath an achievement. Before long, our noses started bleeding. But we ploughed on, intending to reach the first base camp. We knew we wouldn't be allowed to go any further from there anyway, owing to a raging blizzard a little higher up.



We soon met a Swiss group on their way back to Darchen. They told us to turn back too, as it wasn't safe to go on ahead, what with the gusty wind and heavy snowfall, the snow nearly 4ft deep in places. Not wanting to take the risk, we headed back to Darchen. As we couldn't do the actual parikrama, we had to make do with the parikrama of Chhota Kailas, a small shrine made of cloth and string, with three holy rocks in the centre.


The next morning, we woke up to find the village looking like something on a Christmas card- houses, cars, the road... Everything was under a thick blanket of snow. Later that day, we learned that one of our tourmates had died on the way to Saga. We immediately started on our way there, despite the poor visibility. At Saga, we learned that neither cold storage nor a coffin box was available, to preserve and transport the body. All of us were miserable and disturbed. All we wanted was to get back home.

The following day, we drove to the little village on the border. The vegetation here seemed violently green, in contrast to the brown, grey and white of the past few days. I went out to buy some soap. The shopkeeper kept interpreting my actions- repeatedly rubbing my hands over my face- as 'lotion'. Finally, exasperated, she let me in behind the counter and asked me to pick whatever I wanted. I bought a cake of Mysore Sandal Soap (packed in 2003) and a razor. Once I returned to the hotel, I set about the task of getting rid of my new, white beard and making myself look more like the me I was accustomed to.

We arrived in Kathmandu the next day. We visited Mukthinath and Bhakthipur. At last, it was time to go home.

And now we're back... A bunch of middle-aged men and women, badly sunburned, stiff and tired, but happier than ever before. After all, as they say, "East west, home's best!"