Kailash: The Mountain That Came Back With Me

I had seen photographs of Kailash before I saw Kailash. None had prepared me for the silence. It was not the silence of an empty landscape, but one that seemed to possess a presence of its own. The journey from Kolkata through Kathmandu, Timure, Gyirong and Saga, across the Nepal-China border and the immense Tibetan plateau, gradually carried me away from the familiar world. Then came altitude, the thin air, disturbed sleep, exhaustion and the slow discipline of acclimatisation. At times, the body questioned the wisdom of going further; the mind quietly answered, ‘Kailash tak pahunchna hai’.

After Saga came Mansarovar, and the journey seemed to cross an invisible threshold. The lake appeared different every time, turquoise and luminous beneath sunlight, silver-grey under clouds, sometimes merging almost imperceptibly with the distant sky. Its ancient association with manas, the mind, suddenly felt less like mythology and more like experience. Standing beside that immense stillness, I found the mind becoming quieter. And then came moments I still hesitate to interpret. I saw tiny points of light that appeared to descend from the sky towards the lake and disappear into its waters. Perhaps reflections, atmospheric phenomena or an optical illusion, I cannot say. Later, clouds seemed to gather briefly into shapes resembling Om, Ganeshji, a face, a figure, before dissolving into the formless. The soul, however, does not always ask for an explanation. I am not claiming miracles; I am only preserving the mystery. Perhaps the sacred lies sometimes in that uncertain space between what the eye sees and what the soul feels. Perhaps that is also where poetry begins.

From Mansarovar we moved towards Darchen, the base for Yamdwar and the approach to Kailash Parvat. By then, the ancient philosophy of Bharat began to feel remarkably contemporary. The Upanishads questioned the nature of the Self; the Gita spoke of equanimity, detachment and freedom from the tyranny of outcomes; the Puranas transformed mountains, rivers and lakes into a sacred geography of consciousness.

At Kailash, they ceased to be intellectual propositions. When oxygen is scarce, the present moment becomes absolute. When every step demands effort, the ego loses some of its authority. When the mountain cannot be conquered, surrender begins to look like strength. Sitting in meditation before Kailash, I felt a stillness in which thoughts did not disappear but lost their urgency.

I thought of my own poetry too, of years spent writing and watching poems travel through the unpredictable currents of literary appreciation, sometimes finding resonance, sometimes waiting for their moment. Before Kailash, recognition could seem important. There, it seemed strangely small. A mountain does not become magnificent because it is applauded. Perhaps a poem does not become true because it is praised. Perhaps the poet’s real journey is learning to see deeply enough to write what cannot otherwise be said.

And then there was Kailash itself, sometimes veiled by clouds, sometimes brilliant against an impossible blue sky, sometimes appearing distant and unreal, and once so sharply revealed that the patterns of snow and exposed rock seemed almost to suggest a human face. Yet perhaps sacred places acquire their power precisely because they leave room for wonder. Around Kailash, the body feels small, the ego temporary and ordinary anxieties strangely disproportionate.

The altitude tests the lungs, the mind and the will; the soul, strangely, seems to awaken as the body tires. The prayer flags, stone cairns, vast skies, barren plateau and changing waters of Mansarovar altered not only what I saw but how I saw. Poetry, I realised, is perhaps not merely about finding words; it is about learning to see what lies beneath the obvious.

The return through Darchen, Saga, Gyirong, the border and Kathmandu eventually brought me back to Kolkata, to traffic, telephones, responsibilities and familiar noise. But something within had shifted. I had gone carrying my anxieties, ambitions, questions and unfinished poems. I returned with fewer certainties and a deeper silence.

I do not know whether what I experienced at Mansarovar and Kailash was divine, psychological, natural or some mysterious combination of all three. I only know that it has altered the way I look at life, suffering, recognition, poetry and myself. Perhaps that is the true meaning of pilgrimage: not that you return with answers, but that the questions themselves become deeper. I went to Kailash believing I was travelling towards a mountain. I returned wondering whether, all along, the mountain had been travelling towards me.

(The writer is a bilingual author with five published titles to his credit.)