The Mystery of the Kailash Trail - Chapter 7 - Part 3

Book 2: Chapter 7: Part 3: They decide to go to the Gyangdrak Gompa

A Sherpa guide from the tourist group had been given the duty by the tour-leader to stay behind at Darchen and take care of the pilgrims who stayed behind, for problems of altitude sickness, breathlessness and fear of walking at these heights. Such problems came in many forms. Some got breathless, while some got claustrophobic in their tents at night. Some pilgrims were known to have got claustrophobic inside their sleeping bags, because of the heavy sweaters and woolens and blankets and other stuff covering them to protect them from the cold. The tour-guides knew about these problems and the Sherpa guides were trained to be protective of the pilgrims and take care of them in an affectionate manner. Some did, actually most guides took care of the pilgrims in their groups. Some did not, and these were rare.

The monk from Nalanda discussed the visit to Gyengtak Gompa with the Sherpa guide and informed him that the policeman would also accompany them. Shenshe waved to the Sherpa and called out and said, “Go and get three horses, horse-boys and one yak with one yak-boy. You will also come with us and bring your other Sherpa boy also. We will go to Gyangdrak and we will stay there tonight. I want to see the mountain call this sikh pilgrim. He says that the mountain talks to him. They think I have no other work here at Darchen. It is okay. We will all go together and stay at Gyangdrak tonight instead of Darchen.”

The Sherpa guide had been seeing all the arguments and discussion since the night before and he had been sitting quietly at one corner of the tented eatery through the rainstorm. His brother was with him, and they had been with this tour group for more than five years. The tour-leader was a very good man, from their remote village in Nepal. He had gone to Mumbai and established a good tour agency that brought pilgrims to the Mount Kailash from all over India. Some pilgrims came from other countries and they had begun to trust this tour group. The Sherpa guide knew better than to argue with a policeman, even if in Nepal. And this was not Nepal, and this policeman was not a ‘Tibeti’, but a ‘Chini Police’. He went about organizing the animals and boys.

Sardar Amarpal Singh had completed his prayers and sat quietly inside the tented eatery, contemplating his prayer beads and his stainless steel bangle. He wore a single bangle, very thick, and he considered it to be more precious than the prayer beads. He took out a cotton scarf, orangish-saffron in colour, and began to polish the bangle. As he polished it, his mind went back to his house, and to Amritsar in India, and to the Amrit Sarovar, the sacred tank around the Harmandir Sahib Temple. He had been sitting at the steps and had been deeply immersed in feeling a happy glow at seeing the temple in the evening. At that moment, a tall, well-built, Sikh Sevaadar (= volunteer), had come up to him and mysteriously produced the prayer beads, the steel bangle and the cotton scarf and gave it to him and walked away.

Amarpal felt that it was most definitely a miracle. It was a sign from the sacred book, and from the Sikh gurus, to go closer to the temple, to learn more about the word of Guru Nanak, and to do something significant in his life. Since that day, more than fifteen years ago, Amarpal had left his family, property and partnerships with his brothers and uncles, and had gone into the service of the temple. The priests at the temple had been reluctant to allow him initially, for he had come from a large joint family, and they wondered if he had left his family after fights and problems. Amarpal returned to his family and brought back men and women from his house to meet the seniormost granthi (= priest) at the Harmandir Sahib temple. They had jointly vouched for Amarpal’s serious intent and his total devotion to the word of Guru Nanak.

He had not gone about trying to become a granthi, or a sevaadaar or a kar sevak (= voluntary worker or helper) at the Golden Temple premises, and the various other establishments in the complex. He immersed himself in the library in the temple and at the Akal Takht (= the highest body of the Sikh religion). He kept walking around in the museum premises at the temple and visited all libraries and museums in Amritsar. He had wanted to understand the world of his first teacher, Guru Nanak, and he had wanted to understand why the great man had done what he had done. Thereafter, Amarpal had decided to focus and limit himself to the Udaasi (= travelogues and pilgrimages) of Guru Nanak, and especially his third Udaasi that had brought him to Sumeru.

Shenshe and the monk from Nalanda checked out the horses and the yak and the boys. Luggage and sleeping bags and food packages were loaded on to the yak. The team moved out of Darchen, with Amarpal, Shenshe and the monk from Nalanda riding the horses. The boys kept a tight grip on the bridles and walked at a rapid pace towards Gyangdrak. The Nandi Hill and the Mount Kailash peak could be seen glistening under bright sunlight. A small rivulet coming down from the Nandi Hill towards Darchen had frozen up. Some of the topmost ice sheets were beginning to melt down and this made the slope towards Gyangdrak to become slippery.

The boys knew what to do. They controlled the horses and kept them walking towards the monastery. Sardar Amarpal Singh had ridden horses earlier in his native village, but this journey was quite different. He had also become older, heavier and had not ridden horses on steep slopes. The boy kept asking him to lean forward to help the horse climb the slope faster. The monk from Nalanda found it difficult to breathe if he would lean forward. He had to sit straight up and gasp for air, and this made it more difficult. He ended up being almost breathless. Shenshe had traveled this route, but had always done it on foot. He did not have any problem with his breathing and enjoyed riding the horse.

The Gyangdrak Gompa, or Gyengtak, as it was usually called, sat on a hillock that looked like an island by itself, in this harsh topography around the Mount Kailash. One could see the Ashtapada slope from behind the Gyangdrak Gompa. Today, it was resplendant. The monastery seemed to have been constructed across three or four levels. The bottom two levels were in white colour, while the top two levels were in shark contrast, in brown shades. The bottom level also served as the compound around the monastery, and must have helped establish the plinth for its construction at this remote location.

The uppermost level of the monastery was quite majestic in its appearance. It emerged from within the white compound and the ground structures, and rose high above the hillock. It seemed quite juxtaposed with the dark and shining white clouds that were floating around it. One side of this uppermost level did not have any windows. There were four large windows on the each of the other two sides. The side opposite the one without windows had two small windows alongside a broad wide window in the centre. The level below the uppermost had two large windows established in alternate central positions below the four large windows. A faint footpath could be seen after the rainstorm of the previous night, going to the monastery. The prayer flags were intact and did not seem to have been blown away during the storm.

They entered the Gyangdrak Gompa compound and alighted from the horses. The boys and the Sherpas took the animals and went around to spots that they were familiar with. They knew the locations to camp down for the evening and night at the Gompa. Shenshe, Amarpal and the monk from Nalanda walked through the compound. Large prayer wheels were rotating slowly in the noon breeze in the entrance to the compound. Three large prayer wheels were affixed within one wooden frame, and there were twelve such frames in a row. The thirty-six prayer wheels were golden in colour, and the bright-red frames gave it a beautiful contrast.

They could see various camping sites at a distance. Darchen seemed to be just a patch of huts and tents at a distance. The Manasarovar lake was shimmering as a faint patch of sky that had come to rest on the ground. A caravan of tour groups was moving around in the distance, approaching Darchen. Four land rovers followed by two trucks, followed by another group of six land rovers with two trucks. The rainstorm must have lifted in the region, thought Shenshe, and very soon, other pilgrim groups would begin to come together at Darchen.

The entrance to the gompa was similar to those elsewhere, with the two deer seated facing the wheel of dharma, in the center. Towards the hill-slopes, they could see two retreat cabins set up into the cliff. One of the monks was watching them from a lower window and came out to greet and welcome Shenshe, for he had recognised him as the local policeman. Shenshe wondered with amusement, if the monk could figure out the nature of the strange group that he must be seeing, a Han Chinese policeman, a buddhist monk from India, and a sikh pilgrim.