Thumbnail of the Amnye Machen Kora Map

Perhaps it’s just nostalgia; perhaps just the length of time that goes into getting everything right, but even in the days of instant gratification mashups, there’s something special about a good-old paper topographic map.

This one has been a long time coming. Starting in the days when From a start back in 2004 (before our first trip to Amdo, when Goole Earth was just Keyhole…), and incorporating data gathered before and during our 2005 trip, the map is just finished now. I shouldn’t complain, but work kept getting in the way!

Enlargement of the Amnye Machen Kora Map showing Yinkehe village

A pdf version of the map can be downloaded here (6MB pdf). It has been designed to A0 size. This is the kind of sized pdf that will give a print-shop a heart attack! There are lots of lines in this, so ripping the pdf to a print-file will take some time – possibly it’s an overnight job. Alternatively many bog-standard inkjet drivers will allow an A0 file such as this to be tiled onto multiple A4 pages directly from Acrobat.

Note: the file is provided only for personal use/interest only.

The Aksai Chin felt like the ultimate isolation. A desert from Ladakh to the Chang Tang of Northern Tibet, we were crossing a swathe of land where nothing lived. The altitude and dry air made the few colours incredibly vivid, and gave everything an even more surreal feeling.

Just as the railroad opened up the American West, the dust track of Route 219 eternally altered the Tibetan and Chinese far west, making accessible in days a region where travel was once measured by months and seasons.

The road along the western frontier stretches from dusty Yecheng – a town far beyond it’s heyday on the southern rim of the Taklamakan desert – to Lhatze, where it meets the more substantial Friendship Highway between the Himalayan capitals of Kathmandu and Lhasa. Built to assert Chinese control right to the crests of the Himalaya, the track – for it is never much more than that – winds for over 2000km through some of the starkest and most absolute landscape in the world. Peppered by occasional distance (km) marker posts and an endless string of telegraph poles, it crosses some of the worlds highest motorable passes (at least three exceeding 5000m, and one above 5400m), and winds across the Aksai Chin, an inhospitably bleak high-altitude desert, elevated above 5km.

Click on the image to enlarge

From a hitching perspective, traffic is light, and rides both difficult to come by and very expensive. In Yecheng travellers visibly not of a Chinese nationality can expect to pay up to ten times more to set off than the local fair of around Y100. The presence outside Mazar of a checkpost, specifically looking for non-Chinese travellers, coupled with threats and rumours of traffickers vehicles being forfeited, lead to an understandable wariness of foreigners, and consequently prices average around $50-$70US. There’s no public transport as such. Land-cruisers can be hired by the wealthy at a cost of $2000-$3000.

The workhorse of the route, as across most of Western China, is the ubiquitous Dong Feng (‘Do Fen’) lorry. Almost always Enamel Blue, with painted Buddhist icons on the doors, a cracked windscreen and screen pillars fatigued from years of vibrations, these Soviet-era trucks ply the tracks and haunt the repair shops of the region!

The trucks appear to be privately owned and operated, either by a solitary driver, or an extended family group. Travelling with a group does cut down on space, but the family nature possibly provides greater security to hitchers, in what is otherwise an extremely isolated journey. Some of the individual drivers you couldn’t trust so far as you could throw… The drivers fill their trucks with a bizarre assortment of items, and sell them through shops or roadside stalls in Ali, from where they filter through the rest of Ngari and even so far as Lhasa.

The truck itself comprises a cab for 3-4 people, behind which the flat bed of the truck is loaded up to the canvas covered staples with cargo and supplies for the journey. Passengers generally travel in the back with the cargo. Inanimate travelling companions range from the obligatory (2 drums of diesel fuel, drivers sleeping roll, spare tyre inner tubes) to the optional (Pepsi, onions and hundreds of melons) and the bizarre (plastic garden furniture, and livestock – animals can’t be successfully kept in Ali year-round). If you get in with the right drivers, you certainly won’t go hungry!

A word on safety. The road is very high, exposed and isolated. There is no backup in the event of an accident or emergency. For this reason travelling in a group of trucks, and preferably with a balanced family unit (to benefit from the moderating influence of the gentler sex!) is strongly recommended. The temperature plummets overnight, a fall exacerbated by wind-chill through the back of the truck if, as is often the case, you keep driving non-stop. Food is generally (though not necessarily) provided by the drivers – acquire a taste for Tibetan Tsampa! Something to return the favour is a nice touch. Finally, remember that in the event of a serious problem, you would be on your own, equipped with only what you carried with you.

A dusty, fly ridden, truckstop in the desert of South Western Xinjiang strikes few people as the place to spend a holiday, but toward the end of July 1998 the Abra truckstop was – rather poorly -playing host to six travellers for almost a fortnight each. Our reasons for being in what we were fast making the premier regional tourist attraction was to find a ride into Western Tibet. A ride crossing the Kunlun Xian (mountains) and the high plateau of the Akasi Chin which separate the low deserts of Turkistan from the high plateau of Tibet.

After waiting for around ten days in Abra, our drivers were finally beginning to load. Celebrations would have been premature though - there were still a couple of long days spent seeking elusive cargoes, and repacking the results...

Finding a lift initially seemed simple, but promised rides invariably failed to materialise after a night around the local rumour mill. Timekeeping is a low priority in the region as a whole. The drivers we eventually travelled with – a Tibetan family of brothers and a wife from Kham, in Eastern Tibet – fell several days behind schedule after overdoing their alcoholic celebrations at our agreed price of nearly $70US a person. It took another couple of days of watching them loading, reorganising, and unloading cargo, before we finally set off.
Our eventual departure time of three in the afternoon was carefully chosen to take us through the checkpost at Mazar in the dead of night, hopefully passing a sleeping sentry.

Though Abra is built entirely on servicing trucks and drivers, local traffic around Yecheng is equine!

The narrow valley of Mazar was still far off! There was great anticipation in the back of the lorry as we started to move, unseen under the canvas skin, out of the truck compound and south; finally beyond the 3km post! Shortly after the trucks turned and returned to the compound to retrieve something forgotten, but the setback was short-lived!

Seen through the a slit in the canvas back of a truck, this corner of Xinjiang had a timeless air. Beneath the scorching sun, Uighur men were riding or leading donkeys along the desert road, between horizons virtually unobstructed by human endeavour. The occasional mud house stood as the only discernible human feature beside the road. Small villages clustered around the flashes of green that marked out oases.

It was in one of these groups of houses that our drivers unwisely stopped to change a puncture that had been troubling us through the last few unpopulated miles of desert. Stopping in a village, it wasn’t long before a child caught sight of us, and the village policeman had hauled us out of our cocoon into the public glare.
It rapidly became apparent that the policeman didn’t know what to do or expect,but he wanted his pound of flesh… Figures of $3000 were being suggested, though this fell rapidly. The situation diffused itself when he came to copy down our passport details. He produced a crisp white notebook from his breast pocket, and with a flourish took the first passport. As a native speaker of the Uighur language, most closely related to old Turkish he was faced with an array of foreign scripts and languages across the pages of the passports he had confiscated. Taking Bruce’s passport, he laboriously copied down the letter-shapes, from a couple of randomly selected pages, to spell out a nom de guerre – “P A K I S T A N B R U C E”. In the face of our unsuccessfully stifled laughter, he hurriedly decided to send us on our way before he lost further face in his village.

From the 1100m elevation of the Tarim Desert, the road moves into a more rocky setting, and climbs rapidly through gorges through the mountain barrier, eventually reaching the 5060m Chirangsaldi La (pass) just before Mazar. A late dinner in a high valley was our first ‘official’ stop, and our first introduction to our drivers hospitality. A meal of Tsampa and Butter Tea, around the light and warmth of the fire, which together with their laughter broke the otherwise absolute and frigid surrounding darkness.

We drove onward until around four in the morning, when we halted a second time. Major reorganisation of the cargo we’d been trying to get comfortable with took place, with boxes and sacks being flung off into the surrounding darkness. The drivers plan was to bury us deep in the midst of their merchandise to avoid any problems at the feared checkpost ahead.

Both climatically and geologically distinct, & 4000m higher than Yecheng, the valleys of southern Xinjiang were a welcome change after the barren desert

Being totally buried brought beneficial thermal effects, and meant we got even more intimately acquainted, but also meant we were totally trapped, totally unable to see or hear what was happening outside, totally unable to flee, or even to follow the time. The trucks started up again, and jolted along the track. They continued to roll for an interminable time (later ‘termed’ as around 2 hours). Then, the trucks manoeuvred and finally stopped. Silence fell once again, disturbed only by muffled breathing amidst the cargo, and footsteps on shingle outside. The tension mounted as more people started to move around the truck, and started shouting through the night’s calm. Then the suspension dipped as someone climbed aboard. The ropes holding our canvas roof down were being undone, vibrations from their thread feeding into our nest of onions, inner-tubes and rucksacks. Someone was rummaging through the cargo just above us, piercing our cover as we lay still, silence being our only defence. Was this the checkpost? Was there an eager PSB officer inches above us, making sure there was nothing untoward about this nocturnal cargo? How had he known? Had our drivers turned us in? Had word of the afternoons episode preceded us? Or was it our drivers trying to dig us out?

Over breakfast outside Mazar we got to grips with the changing landscape, thinning air and sense of isolation in this enormous closed region.

The familiar hearty laugh and broad grin assured us all was OK as the man we were coming to recognise as the family patriarch reached us. We’d passed straight through Mazar without being noticed, and had stopped in a deserted and frozen valley, eagerly awaiting the rising sun.
The sun soon obliged, rising fast into the sky, chasing shadows down one valley side and up the other. Tibetan style breakfast was Tsampa and butter tea, but anything warm was welcome! Our drivers had a box of instant noodles for their passengers, which we added to the tea, creating a novel culinary fusion, but was not a union that impressed the Tibetans!

Breakfast was both a relieved & relaxed affair. The populated areas of the desert fringes was now behind us, and the drivers were visibly more at home in the mountains than on the plains. Ahead lay a long and dramatic ride across the most remote and deserted mountain range in the world.

309km from Yecheng we crossed a 5100 meter pass in the midst of the army convey we'd spent much of the day overtaking and being overtaking by. While we did our best not to be seen, the army took no interest in us, soldiers occasionally waving if they spotted our white faces.

Much as the first day was made up of desert and villages, the second saw us passing through numerous rocky valleys, laboriously working ever further up into the sky.

From Mazar, the road undulates over passes and into valleys for 250 kilometres before reaching the Aksai Chin. The road here was well built, and traffic relatively heavy – large conveys of army lorries carrying coal, beer and other supplies trundled slowly into and out of Tibet.

309km, and 30 hours from Yecheng, we crossed a 5100m pass in tandem with a large army convey carrying supplies toward Ali. There was very little army traffic on what in reality is a military highway. The road climbs relentlessly through the valleys of the Kunlun Xian, ever upward to the Aksai Chin. Unfortunately, the trucks were less resolute…

A slither of riverside grass was site for an impromptu picnic on the second day. Our driver's plan to buy and roast a goat from the Tajik shepherd (right) fell through at the haggling stage

We stopped for lunch in the early afternoon on a narrow slither of moth-eaten grass. This was still Xinjiang, and the local people were ethnically Turks. Our drivers tried to buy a goat for dinner from a Tajik shepherd with his flock at the side of the road. After some friendly though unsuccessful bartering, he joined us for Tsampa, butter tea with noodles, and Xinjiang watermelon.

Beyond Kangxiwar we watched the sun set that evening over a 5400m pass. Once the sun had set, the temperature plummeted as we lurched onward and upward to the Aksai Chin.

After driving through the night, we woke to the desolate sight of the Aksai Chin. A high altitude desert, too peripheral and too barren to have been of historical value, the Aksai Chin was to become one of the main focuses of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war.

In 1914, the British Indian government, eager to capitalise on their current strengths and formalise their north east boundaries with Tibet, held unsuccessful talks with Chinese and Tibetan delegates in the Indian hillstation of Simla (Shimla), the result of which was each of the three parties left with differing ideas of the borders drawn.
Fifty years, and various governments and dynasties later, the Indian government recognised the borders inherited from pre-independence India (the MacMahmon line, defined along the Himalayan watershed), while the PRC in China recognised limits of influence defined at times more advantageous to the Chinese state.
In Autumn 1962, while the attentions of the world were focussed on events around Cuba, differences between the Chinese and Indian interpretations of the border lead to a series of battles along the Himalaya, from Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh. The better equipped & positioned People’s Liberation Army won substantial victories, before retreating along most of the border to the line recognised by India. Today, China still occupies the Aksai Chin, an area of Kashmir ‘above’ Laddakh, and Chinese maps generally extend 100km into Indian Arunachal Pradesh.

4100m, and a spectacular sunset over the Kangxiwar Pass; 400km and 36 hours from Yecheng... 700km and 50 hours from Ali!

From a traveller’s perspective, little more can have been at stake in the war than national pride (though the Aksai Chin now is an essential link on the West Tibet road). Aside from a couple of tiny villages, the expanse of the plateau plays host only to brackish lakes and smashed beer bottles. The midday sun scorches, and exposed nights freeze. The flat expanse of plateau contrasts strongly with the endless valleys of the previous days.

Lungmo Co - A building and collection of tents gained Sumish, the first 'town' inside Tibet, a mention on the map.

Eventually, a lake marked the border of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and, over a greasy lunch of very Turkish noodles at Sumish we found ourselves – rather unsteadily on the narrow benches – at least technically inside Tibet. However, there was no sign of any Tibetans, the only ‘locals’ being Uighurs, moved there from Xinjiang for road maintenance.

The road then meandered, gradually falling from the height of the Aksai Chin before rising again to the 5000m Lungmo Co [lake] near Changmar. We reached there in the early evening of the third day, facing a spectacular backdrop of snow-capped mountains.

At one the next morning, and for the first time on the journey, we stopped to sleep. A small concrete and mud compound, with equally rampant dogs and bedbugs was our first taste – or more accurately smell – of Tibet on the journey. The heavy smoke of a yak dung stove, with its welcome heat and faint orange glow had a particularly homely feel after so long in the back of a truck.

The morning of the fourth day was virtually preceded by our drivers raring to set off once again. After four hours driving – around 8.30am – we found ourselves once again awaiting repairs, this time beside a river, in a landscape of wide valleys and hills. A landscape we were fast coming oblivious to.

Stopping for water in the highest reaches of what becomes the Indus. As ever, telegraph poles race between the horizons.

Around km830 there was another small and uneventful checkpost.

We spent much of the day driving around Banggong Co [lake], part of a long straggling body of water, stretching across the border almost to Leh. A small fishing boat moored outside a building was enough to kindle the drivers attention, and we were left sunbathing, incognito at this most unlikely of ‘resorts’, while they backtracked to what must be one of the highest fish restaurants in the world!

Leaving the lake early evening, we passed the old Tibetan town of Rutog, near which was another checkpost. That night we stopped about four hours from Ali, sleeping in the cool dry air, under a bewildering array of stars.

The fifth and final day dawned early as ever. The final few hours were uneventful until suddenly, through the slits in the canvas that had been our eyes for much of the past week, the sights and sounds of a city flooded in! We’d finally arrived at Ali. The trucks swung into a courtyard, and in the space of a bewildering couple of minutes, we parted – them with their Yuan, us with our rucksacks – ready to go forth and find a bed to collapse on.

The unique massif of Kailas protruding through the morning mist. On this, the north east face from about 4km, the distinctive rock strata and pyramidal shape are clearly discerned.

Within the league of mountains, Everest and K2 are renown solely for their size; their sheer height above the distant seas. On a more spiritual level, many mountains are seen as sacred, bridging the gap between earth and heaven, even providing a suitable earthly abode for the gods. Modern Turkey abounds in peaks sacred to the pre-Turkish inhabitants: Olympus, home to the Hellenic gods, & Mount Arrat, sacred to the Armenians.
Further east, beyond the Himalaya, Gan Rinpoch or – to use the more popular Indian name – Mount Kailas, is a contemporary pilgrimage site to Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and Bön-Po. Pilgrims make the sacred yet arduous journey from across South and East Asia, to a mountainous region enduring in its isolation. A region devoid of airports, roads, hotels and most modern conveniences. A region beyond reach of the twentieth century.

The ruin of a fort sit dramatically atop a ridge overlooking what was once the major caravan route between Nepal, Ladakh and Central Tibet.

Twelve dusty hours south of Ali, capital of the Ngari region of Western Tibet, the peak of Kailas rises from the plateau. Anticipating our approach, the more experiences pilgrims – many were returning from other pilgrimages nearby – had climbed atop the back of the truck, awaiting their first glimpse through the foothills and swirling cloud of the snow clad peak. The two dozen Tibetan sharing the truck with us, were all Buddhist save for a couple of Bön-po. Traces of the ancient rivalries between the animist Bön-po and the upstart Buddhists were nowhere among the pilgrims, but the dramatic Himalayan landscape bore the scars of the mythological battles for dominance between the incumbent Bön-po priest, Narn Bön-chung, and the Buddhist saint Milarepa. Though Buddhism won both the battle for devotees and – at least in the legend of Tibet – the battle for Kailas, the two religions practice perfect tolerance between each other.

Beyond its significance to Buddhist and Bön-po, Kailas is revered by both Hindus and Jains. To Hindus, Kailas is the earthly throne of Shiva. This stems from an association between Kailas and the mythological Mt. Meru, and separating one from the other is often difficult. To Jains Kailas – or Astapada – is reputedly the place where Rishabha was the first being to attain Liberation.

For most pilgrims, their reason for making so arduous and expensive a pilgrimage is to perform one – though more usually more – circambulations of the mountain. Traditionally the circuit, or Kora, starts and finishes in Darchen, a small village of mud-brick buildings recently supplemented by two crude guesthouses for foreign visitors: one for Indian pilgrims, and one for the rest of the world.

The Kora follows a series of river valleys around the base of Kailas, leading from Darchen & the Plain of Barkha in the South. The valleys present generally easy walking, though do obscure much of the west and east faces of the peak. To the Northeast, the Drolma La (pass) at 5600m is both physically the most challenging, and spiritually the most significant point of the trek. The ground below the pass is steep and rocky, making good shoes or walking boots advisable.

Around the track are three monasteries offering accommodation rooms to official Indian Pilgrim groups. Space permitting they’ll rent a bed to all comers. A more interesting but even less private option is to stay with one of the many nomad families living around the Kora, though their tents can be smoky, damp and flea-ridden! Finally, there’s no shortage of camping space for anyone with a reasonable tent.

Timewise most organised groups following the Kora take three or four days, constrained in part by the leisurely pace of their pack animals. Two days (one short followed by one longer) is quite a manageable pace, but most pilgrims go around in a single (though long) day. Each morning in the summer, a large body of Tibetans leave Darchen around 3am, arriving back early evening. This kind of pressured pace would leave little time for side-journeys or photographs; though of course few pilgrims think of such earthly things!

The hard way! A pilgrim prostrating around Kailas, a 25 day journey

The devout pilgrim will aim to perform an auspicious 3, 13 or 108 circambulations, the 108th of which is rumoured to lead to instant Nirvana! For the real die-hard (wish there was no pun intended), prostrations are the way to go! Gaining maximum merit, pilgrims bring their body into contact with the entire surface of the Kora – stretching themselves flat on the path with each pace taken, and pushing a stone along with their outstretched fingertips to mark the start of the next prostration. If interested, the 50km Kora takes around 25 days, and a yak hide ‘apron’ can be hired in Darchen to provide protection from the terrain!

Buddhists, Hindus and Jains follow the Kora in a clockwise direction, keeping the mountain to their right. Bön-po are instantly distinguishable as they follow the identical path, but in an anticlockwise direction!

The Kora starts in Darchen and initially follows the foothills at the fringe of the Plain of Barkha. An expanse of dust, sparsely scattered with gorse-like foliage, the plain stretches beneath the twin lakes of Manasarovar and Rakas Tal across to the Greater Himalaya, which mark the border with Nepal and India.

Sunset across the plain of Barkha looking in the distance toward the Greater Himalaya marking the border with Nepal and South Asia

After skirting the foothills due west of Darchen for the first hour, the track rises in it’s south-westernmost corner, and enters the Lha Chu Valley. The broad mouth of the Lha Chu valley – far greener than the plain we are leaving – is one of the spiritual ‘hotspots’ of the Kora.

Weather permitting, this offering the first good views of Kailas on the Kora. A Chorten and Tarboche (ritual flagpole) are surrounded by a large number of carved mani stones left by pilgrims over the ages.

Deserted in August, the mouth of the Lha Chu valley is the site of the Tarboche (flagpole) and Kailas' main Saga Dawa festival.

This natural theatre of the Lha Chu mouth is site of the Saga Dawa festival during the full moon of the fourth lunar month – currently around June.

The festival attracts both Buddhist and Bön-po pilgrims from across Tibet. Its culmination involves replacing prayerflags on the Tarboche ceremonially and jointly by both groups, though as ever with Buddhist pilgrims circling clockwise and Bön-po anticlockwise! Again, there are no signs of friction between the followers.

The festival marks the summer opening of Kailas season, and the ballooning of the regional population caused by the influx of pilgrims.

Beyond the Tarboche, the steep sided Lha Chu or Dronglung valley leads further north, stepped in deep green vegetation. Foothills and morning mist conspire to obscure Kailas from the pilgrim, but from the elevation of Chuku Monastery, high on the outside ridge of the valley, the peak is more visible.

Toward its northernmost extreme, the valley curves east. Ahead lies the Dira Phuk Monastery. Two recent bridges cross the glacial rivers, the former elevated on the hillside south of the monastery.

A nomadic boy outside the Dira Phuk monastery. Behind is the north face of Kailas. Despite subzero temperatures by early evening, the boy's clothes barely covered him.

Before the unobstructed north face of Kailas the Dira Phuk monastery sits dramatically on the landscape. A small Karma Kagu order, the monastery buildings house only a couple of monks, but provides a local focus for nomads, and operates an Indian Pilgrim dormitory.

The dramatic valleys to the North of Kailas were walked by a seemingly never-ending stream of pilgrims.

Leaving Dira Phuk Gompa around eight in the morning catches the rising sun, and that mornings early pilgrims, already five hours walk out of Darchen. It was this stretch up to the Drolma La that presented the best scenery, the best photos, the best weather, and the hardest walking.

The climb commences, initially gradually, through the broad green valleys. A thin line of pilgrims snakes behind, gaining relentlessly on us, impervious to the altitude. A fellow traveller – perhaps betraying his North American roots – called this a spiritual Disney, a fair description. Pilgrims of four distinct religions walked these valleys, more in the spirit of a bank-holiday escapade than a serious or arduous pligrimage. Bunyan it was not! The pilgrims curiosity and concern for our wellbeing was evident. Tibetans offered Tsampa, yak cheese or other indeterminate foods, thick with dirt. Indian pilgrims called from behind their stoves to offer sweet Indian chai from the precariously balanced aluminum kettle. Food was shared, offers of help made, clothes and bags tried, group photos taken, and friendships sworn.

Kailas from the climb toward the Drolma-La

Back on the serious business of pilgrimage, the path climbed ever higher toward the 5600 metre Drolma-la. Upward out of the green, we climed into the rocky, exposed moraine of a glacier. As we ascended, the landscape became ever more alien, and the rock formations assumed ever greater significance. Pilgrims tested their karma, conviction or honour by putting their finger blind into an age-old hole in the rock, or by trying to crawl through an improbably small gap between boulders. Prayerflags and personal objects surround the path, left by pilgrims eager to gain merit long after they’ve departed.

The Drolma La forms the high point of the Kora both spiritually and physically. The final stretch was hard going at the high (5600m) altitude, and even locals seemed to be having a hard time of it. Of course, there’s always the yak-back tour, which makes things a little easier!

Drolma La

A huge glacier overlooks pilgrims making the final ascent, struggling up the path it hew over the centuries. In the midst of its moraine, a huge cubic rock known as Phawang Mebar is festooned with prayer flags. Pilgrims let out cries and whoops of delight as they come into sight of it. Passing through the flags is believed – by Buddhist pilgrims – to mark the transition from this life to the next, erasing the sins of this life, and leaving the pilgrim unblemished by their past – though still unfortunately susceptible to their future.

As we arrived, the pass was basking in midday sun, though the weather is always unpredictable and often bitter. Everywhere were pilgrims: monks reading mantras at the sacred point; lay-pilgrims gathering stones to take back, and leaving items as offerings – hair, shoes, a lost tooth; others just celebrating their achievement. Paper-printed Windhorses cast into the air by pilgrims upwind fluttered past on the breeze, taking the benefits of the prayer into the air, and scattering it on the land below. Groups of people gathered for group photographs, food was shared, addresses given, languages overcome, promises made. Seemingly every rock, every stone had been carved with a mantra. The views off the pass were equally spectacular – from 5636m, the landscape both below and above was awesome.

From the Drolma La, the path drops steeply, falling into a barren, glaciated valley. Shattered black rock filled the base, save for a few shimmering green lakes, brilliant against the ragged severity of their shores. Little lives in these valleys, the voices of people carrying far and wide.

Lake Yokmo Tso

As the path dropped, around 600m in a couple of kilometres, it was joined by ever more rivers, racing into the increasingly hospitable valleys below.

With various paths zigzagging back and forth, pilgrims seemed to be flowing from the heights, all hurrying down the precarious sides of the pass, all into the valley below.

Eventually – after a rocky scramble at the foot of the pass – the path came into the Lham Chukir valley.

The Lham Chukir Valley

A sea-change from the pass of the previous few hours, this was a valley resplendent in green, bisected along its length by a vivaciously flowing river, and abundant in flowers.

The valley ran south west for about 15 easygoing kilometres. Groups of pilgrims wandered along, some hurrying, others pausing for tea at the nomads tents once again beside the track.

Most of the tents here were to supply pilgrims with essential pilgrimage gear – an eclectic array of tsampa, tea, noodles and pepsi were available (a caffeine & sugar boost was exactly what I needed here!). The availability of many of these things did leave a mark on the environment – the Dira Phuk monastery had suffered particularly from litter, though to blame litter exclusively on foreign tourists or pilgrims would be to overlook a key character of the Tibetan people.

Toward the end of the valley, the third Kailas Gompa sits distinctly on the right hand side of the track. Zutrul Phuk is perched among many religious buildings and edifices, destroyed by time and more deliberate forces. The Gompa is used by most groups for the second or third night stop, but being two or three hours outside Darchen, its not usually necessary to stop here.

Further south still, the path enters a narrow ravine, and starts once more to climb. The river below becomes faster flowing, and the land regains its brown dusty colour. Crossing the crest of an outcrop, the rusty plain of Barkha once again rears into view. From here, the path drops onto the plain, then follows the foothills west once again, back toward Darchen. At the southernmost point, an distinctive tent sits, issuing tickets to all Chinese and foreigners (Tibetans get through free). They’re not too insistent, and don’t give chase if you don’t stop!

So is my new life already tainted by sin.