Pilgrimage to Mount Kailash— Crossing the Sacred Mountain Within

Member Submission by Yanli Mi

Prologue: Two Circumambulations, One Snowstorm, and an Encounter with the Axis of the World

Written on October 18, 2026, aboard a high-speed train bound for Shenzhen.

Last night, a friend in a chat group invited me to share my pilgrimage to Mount Kailash this year. I said that maybe today, on the train, I’d have time to write it down slowly.

Coincidentally, my father also asked me last night: “You’ve been to so many places—why don’t you write down your travel experiences?”

Yes. Why not?

So, before beginning my next journey, I decided to first record this pilgrimage that has only just ended.

Although I traveled thousands of miles to Mount Kailash, more or less carrying some expectation—that by circumambulating the mountain we might dispel the karma of a lifetime and from then on live a better life—I repeatedly noticed a line carved into the stones by the roadside on the way in:

“There is no way of life in this world that is righteous.

Sacred mountains and holy lakes are not the destination.

Accept the ordinary self, but do not give up inspiration and faith.

Love life—we are all on the road.”

I am deeply grateful to those who carved these words into the stone.

Because they truly made my still-uninflated ego freeze for a moment.

Yes—what is there to boast about, even if one successfully circumambulates the mountain?

In the end, we are only using one real mountain to cross over the other sacred mountain inside our own hearts.

I. The Summons of the Fire Horse Year

To be honest, ever since I first felt Mount Kailash calling me in the Fire Horse Year, I had already been carrying a pilgrim’s heart.

In some mysterious way, there was a strange synchronicity at work.

In 2026, the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert in the United States happened to take Axis Mundi—the world axis—as its theme.

And in many ancient religious traditions, Mount Kailash is also regarded as the center of the world, the axis linking heaven and earth.

In Hindu cosmology, it is the sacred dwelling place of Shiva and his consort Parvati.

According to legend, the Fire Horse Year is a special year for Mount Kailash, arriving only once every sixty years. Circumambulating it once in this year is said to be equivalent to thirteen circuits in an ordinary year, and some even say it can erase the karma of an entire lifetime.

Of course, these legends have no scientific basis.

But what harm is there in believing such things, so long as faith makes people more humble, kinder, and more passionate about life?

As for me personally, I also had a very practical, if a little ridiculous, wish:

I really, really wanted to straighten out my spine!

Ten years ago, I could run marathons and climb Kilimanjaro. Now, with age and long-accumulated sports injuries, my lumbar spine, hips, and lower limbs all have problems to varying degrees.

In 2018, I went to Nepal; in 2019, I went to Tibet. But this time, I no longer dared to think of myself as the same energetic climber I had once been.

Like ordinary people, I worried about altitude sickness and whether my injured body could endure such a grueling journey.

So I decided to leave on September 10, flying from Shanghai to Xining, then taking the famous Qinghai-Tibet Railway into Tibet, hoping to allow my body to gradually adapt to the plateau environment.

Yes, slowly, I once again adapted to this plateau terror known as “altitude sickness.”

From Lhasa to Mount Kailash, the minibus that had originally been planned to arrive in one day had to stop overnight in Saga Zong because of the driver’s fatigue and altitude sickness. We didn’t reach the destination until the afternoon of the next day.

Later, the bus returning to Lhasa even took a full 28 hours on the road.

The circumambulation of Mount Kailash is a plateau hiking route of about 52 kilometers (32 miles), with the highest point at Drolma La Pass, at an elevation of about 5,630 meters (18471 feet). And the entire Ngari circuit is even longer—several thousand kilometers—constantly passing through plateaus at elevations of four to five thousand meters.

Gratitude to those who built and maintain the plateau roads! It is their labor that has allowed us today to follow the heavenly road and come before the snowy mountains.

II. Why Would Anyone Circumambulate a Mountain More Than Sixty Times?

From September 19 to 20, I completed my first circumambulation.

To be honest, when the first one ended, the thing I most wanted to do was leave.

Although I had hired a local Tibetan porter, which lightened the burden considerably, the hardship of the high altitude, the primitive lodging conditions, and the limited sanitation facilities had already left me exhausted.

I felt that I had completed the task.

And yet, after crossing Drolma La Pass, at a supply point on the way down, I met a young man and a youthful woman. At first I thought they were a couple. Only after we spoke did I learn that the very healthy and beautiful young woman was actually the young man’s guide.

She told me that last year, after coming to Mount Kailash for the first time and circumambulating it, she had felt the mountain’s summons. This year, she had once again traveled all the way here—from Mohe, at the far northern end of China.

By the time we met, she said she had already completed more than sixty circumambulations!

And she was getting faster and faster—now she could finish one circuit in a single day.

More than sixty times!

I couldn’t help but study the girl in front of me carefully. She was young and athletic, full of vitality, her face glowing with health. I sincerely admired the fact that she must have accumulated a great deal of merit.

Yes, she said, and she also hoped to pass that merit on to more people.

What impressed me most was not only her health and beauty, but also the humility that radiated from her naturally.

It was as if circling the mountain again and again had not made her feel superior to others; rather, it had made her even humbler.

A thought suddenly came to me: Since I had already gone to so much effort to come to this sacred mountain, why not accept the situation as it is? Why not walk it once more and see just what kind of magic could make this young woman come back again and again?

I chuckled to myself—and I might as well calculate the merit account while I’m at it.

If one circumambulation in the Fire Horse Year counts as thirteen ordinary circuits, then two circuits would count as twenty-six, wouldn’t they?

Besides, long before this, at Burning Man in Nevada, my friend Margarita from Russia had suggested that I stay in the mountain area for four days.

Only after I truly began the circuit did I understand: it’s not that one doesn’t want to stay for four days—it’s that every extra day means one more day enduring the extremely harsh living conditions on the plateau!

But in the end, I still decided to walk it again.

From September 22 to 23, I completed my second circumambulation.

Two completely different experiences, both enormous challenges to body and spirit.

The first time, I was as if completing a task.

The second time, I began to truly want to understand this mountain, and the people so deeply drawn to it.

Originally, after resting, I had even planned to begin a third circumambulation.

But the sacred mountain seemed to have other arrangements.

III. The First Snow on the Sacred Mountain

On September 24, I went with a few fellow travelers to charter a car and visit the ruins of the Guge Kingdom.

On the morning of September 25, anyone who had not yet left the Ngari region the night before, upon opening their window, would have seen this:

Mount Kailash had snowed!

The media called it a “blizzard.”

But in my own memory, it was the holiest and most beautiful blessing bestowed upon us by gods and goddesses.

Wasn’t it?

Mount Kailash is, after all, a sacred mountain revered by countless believers on the snowy plateau.

If you have come all this way to pay homage to the snow mountain, but have not witnessed it in a snowstorm, have not seen the vast, borderless scene after the snow—like another world—how can you truly say you have seen the face of the sacred mountain and holy lake?

Even today, I still believe:

That day, as we drove away from Ngari after the snow, the sacred mountain and holy lake I saw were among the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my life.

What was even more miraculous was not only the snowy peaks.

It was also the life we encountered in that world of ice and snow.

The Tibetan antelopes running beneath snow-covered Namnani Mountain.

The Tibetan deer by Ghost Lake, loving each other tenderly, undisturbed by anyone, on the pure, white earth.

The marmots darting and rolling through the pristine snow and multicolored prayer flags.

And that antelope I have never been able to forget.

Near Mayou Bridge, it was running through the snow. Then, suddenly, it tumbled! With an injured front leg, it lay bleeding in the snow. Witnessing the actions people took to try to save it, I suddenly felt, at that moment, that the sacred is not found only in mountains, holy lakes, and temples. It also exists in every vulnerable life, and in whether human beings are willing to stop and care about another creature’s suffering.

At last, we finally set out on the road away from Ngari.

Outside the car window stretched hundreds of kilometers of snow country, seeming to have no end.

Sunlight shone upon the fresh snow, and ridges, valleys, wilderness, and distance—all of it was reshaped by ice and sun.

It was a kind of glory beyond words, transcending majestic, magnificent, silent, or vast.

Between heaven and earth, it seemed no other color was needed.

Can you imagine it?

If I were Shiva, if I were his snowy mountain goddess Parvati, I too would surely want to set my home in the human world here: The roof of the world.

Neighbor to the snow mountains, and home to heaven and earth.

IV. We Are All on the Road

A friend asked me:

“After circumambulating the mountain, what was your greatest takeaway?”

Of course, my takeaways can fill myriads.

Two circumambulations, two different kinds of challenge to body and spirit.

Along the way there were also so many people, accidents, hardships, kindnesses, and unimaginable encounters that I have not yet told.

But if I must name the most direct and truest feeling, it would be this:

As I left Ngari, watching the endless snow scenes outside the window slowly recede into the distance, there was only one emotion in my heart.

Boundless gratitude.

Gratitude to the mountains and rivers, gratitude to heaven and earth.

Gratitude to the people and lives I met along the way.

Gratitude to my body, though no longer as strong as it was when I was young, still accompanied me in completing the two circumambulations.

And gratitude for this snowstorm, which allowed me to see a world I had never seen before.

Perhaps what circumambulation truly gave me was not the erasure of some great burden of karma, nor some power beyond the ordinary.

It was that it made me understand more clearly:

Sacred mountains and holy lakes are not the destination.

Accept the ordinary self, but do not abandon ideals and faith.

Love life—we are all on the road.

This is only the prologue to my pilgrimage to Mount Kailash.

The real story, and the people I met along the way, have yet to be told.

And I am already once again on the road to the next journey.