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Blogs by Niki Collins-Queen
Are you ready for a pilgrimage to Mount Kailas in western Tibet?
3/10/2011 2:09:38 PM
“To a Mountain in Tibet” is the mesmerizing story of Colin Thubron's. Mount Kailas, the holiest mountain on earth, is sacred to four religions and one-fifth of humankind. It has never been climbed. Even today under Chinese domination the people of four religions circle the mountain in devotion to different gods.
Thubron makes the journey to mark his mother's recent death and leave a sign of the loss of his father and sister. Along with Iswor, his guide, Ram the cook and Ohabu and his horse, Thubron plods by foot to Mount Kailas along the Karnali River, the source of the Ganges River.
The trek is arduous. Thubron inhales in panicky gasps and faints in the thin air at 11,000 feet. He fears if things are like this now how will he be on Mount Kailas' at 18, 500 feet. It also brings back a memory of his mother's call for air. When he hooked the oxygen mask over her face her hands came up to clasp it, comforted. He says the journey was too hard and too steep to nurture the reflection he was hoping for.
Because most of Thubron's book is written as an impartial observer I particularly enjoyed the intimate accounts of his family, his struggle with the politics, poverty, legends and customs of the region, the certainty of the saints, and the transience of human existence.
Thubron's skepticism is gentle. When a monk who had studied tantra for three years called it a science and refused to call it “a philosophy still less a faith” Thubron said, “I tried to imagine this, but wrong words swam into my mind: rejected life, self-hypnosis, the obliteration of loved differences. Premature death.”
Because Thubron's Anglican childhood offered no Mass for the dead, no intercessions he asked a monk “Can you help the dead?” Thubron called the monk's belief in karma and his response “if you dedicate good deeds to them” a kindlier tradition.
Thubron says the practice of sky burials was instigated around Kailas in the twelfth century. Since the frozen mostly treeless earth can barely absorb its dead Holy law confines a burial only for the plague-dead and criminals. They are sealed underground to prevent their reincarnation. Destitute bodies are tipped into Tibet's rivers. The rest have sky burials. Their bones and flesh are cut into small pieces and tossed on a platform to be eaten by vultures. The birds are considered sacred. Giving their body to the birds is considered an act of charity and lightens the karma of the dead.
His lyrical writing speaks of twin lakes: the shocking violent peacock blue of Rakshas Tal and the pure cobalt of Manasarovar. Both are edged with snow cap mountains. At over 15,000 feet Manasarovar is the highest freshwater lake of its size on earth.
Thubron's travel memoir is a compelling account of the landscape, people, politics, history, mythical and spiritual traditions of Tibet and the surrounding region.
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