February 2016

know we’re supposed to stay at a teahouse near Zutrul Phuk Monastery tonight, but I don’t know much longer it will take to arrive there, nor how far away the rest of my group and our guides are. Yet I’m thinking with dismay— far ahead. Anxious to reach the monastery before nightfall, I trudge on without stopping in what I hope is the right direction. Over glacial ridges and false summits, down treacherous gravel slopes, and through Mars-meets-Middle-Earth landscapes. I munch a chocolate bar while hiking. I’m hungry, but my louder internal grumble is a stream of self-admonishment for getting lost in the TransHimalayan Mountains, 5,000 meters up in the sky, with a bum knee and just a bit of candy. After seven hours alone, I come upon a pilgrim’s tea tent, where a wrinkly Tibetan lady in traditional dress hands me a sealed bottle of drinking water. She refuses to accept my offered payment. I pray this little kindness foreshadows salvation ahead.

FROM EGYPT’S MOUNT SINAI, WHERE GOD handed laws down to the Israelites, to Japan’s Mount Fuji, the home of Shintoism’s eternal youth goddess Sengen, certain peaks lend themselves to spiritual passage more than others.

In Asia, no mountain is more venerated than 6,638-meter Mount Kailash, an isolated peak in far western Tibet, part of the Trans-Himalayas, which run parallel to, and north of, the Himalayas. Four religions make it the mythological center of their theology. For Hindus, it’s the home of Shiva and his wife Parvati, who enjoyed a 10,000-year sexual union here. Buddhists see the earthly reflection of Meru, a mountain that reaches underground to the lowest of hells and ascends to the highest heaven. Tibetan Buddhists call the mountain Kang Rinpoche, presided over by meditation deity Demchog and once the abode of famed guru-poet Milarepa. To followers of BÖn, Tibet’s animist, pre-