The Mystery of the Kailash Trail - Chapter 9 - Part 1

Book 2: Chapter 9: Part 1:  Loga of the Kla-Chu, senior monk at Chiu Gompa.

It had been an entire since they had met the senior monk at the Chiu Gompa. Vijay Kulkarni had decided to stay back at the monastery. Himanshu and Paramita had gone ahead with the tourist group. The senior monk had spoken with the tour guide leader and requested him to allow Vijay Kulkarni to stay at the Chiu Gompa. The tour guide had been worried and wondered about the excuse that he would have to give at Nyalam when he would return with the other pilgrims. It would be five days yet, for anyone to notice that Vijay had gone missing from the group. 

Vijay was very happy to have stayed back at the Chiu Gompa. It was not usual for non-Tibetan and non-Buddhist or Bon to stay overnight at the Chiu Gompa, unless there was a storm or an unexpected situation. Tibetan pilgrims seemed to be staying back, in their entire aspect of eternal timelessness. Their pilgrimage around Manasarovar or Mount Kailash seemed to be without any time-bound deadlines. They traveled with meagre resources and did not have any support system. They depended entirely on the local monasteries and would just walk in, knowing that they would not be turned away. They made themselves at home, helping, cleaning and cooking at the Chiu Gompa, and one of them brought a bowl of moderately pungent noodle soup.

One of the windows at the Chiu Gompa’s main prayer hall overlooked a spectacular panorama of the Manasarovar and the mountains that could be seen beyond the great lake. He could see the tremendously awe-inspiring landscape. The distant mountains across the waters of the Manasarovar seemed to be just standing there, suspended in the clouds. The senior monk came up to stand alongside Vijay and looked out of the window. He kept watching silently, soaking in the nippy air that came from the great lake.

“I am known by several titles in the sacred order, but knowing that you are from India, from a land that I love so dearly, you may call me as Loga of the Kla-Chu, for that is how I was known.” The senior monk said, “My native village is a very small and remote one, deep in the valleys where several Himalayan streams come together to flow into the Indus. The Kla-Chu is also one of them, and our village moves about, depending on the availability of good grazing lands above and below. It was beautiful land and the people are extremely innocent and trusting. My parents decided that I should go away from the valley and make my future.”

Vijay smiled and thanked the senior monk, and said, “I am Vijay Kulkarni, from Pune in India. I am from Maharashtra. I have traveled over many regions in the Himalayas, but I am yet to go to the source of the Indus. The actual source is supposed to be unknown, but the many mountain streams that come in to give the great river its strength are spread over a great area. Is the Kla-Chu somewhere in the upper reaches before the Indus gains in its strength or is it after it reaches some of the upper plains? Are there any monasteries in that region?”

The senior monk replied, “I heard that someone had gone up into the inner valleys, some of the most unknown and secret ones, and he had gone up there with our monks. The exact details are not known as yet, but they came out and said that they had been to the actual source of the great river. They had gone up from Banggokong, and they had walked through several springs of Himalayan streams. Do you know that if you want to walk in search of the actual source, as we think it should be at, among all our local villages, we would have to go somewhere close to the northern reaches of the Mount Kailash kora, probably somewhere north of Dirapuk.”

“North of Dirapuk!” exclaimed Vijay. He was thinking it out, scanning the maps in his memory and his knowledge of the region from the many travelogues and books that he had studied in his explorations into the Mount Kailash region. He said, “There are none. There are no valleys that lead out of Dirapuk to the north. There is one, but it does not go anywhere. There cannot be any continuity outside the kora. If there were, then the great rivers of the world would not have existed at all. They would have flowed into the valley of the sacred mountain and would have submerged the great lake of Manasarovar. There would have been no Chiu Gompa or Choku Gompa. The valley of the kora is a natural drainage. Is it not?”

The senior monk of Chiu Gompa nodded, “Yes. Come, let me show you an artists’ illustration of what he saw once, in the harsh winter, when he had to stay back at the Chiu Gompa. This must have been painted nearly 150 years ago or 100 years at least. We do not know for sure.” He gestured for Vijay to accompany him to one of the paintings that were on the wall near the window. It was an illustrative representation of the Kailash kora as it was nowadays, almost. The senior monk pointed out to a darkish line, broken at places, drawn on the valley slopes, and said, “See that line. I feel that must have been a drainage mark for the winter ice that would melt and flood the valley. Nobody would have seen the flooding of the kora, unless someone stayed back or was trapped in the valley.”

“You are all lucky,” said Vijay, “the upper slopes are smooth and have been removed of their boulders and stones. There are no major landslides in the valley of the kora during monsoon or winter. There are no glaciers threatening the valley. But, if you look at the great lake of Manasarovar, the Rakshas Lake and the valley in-between these two big water bodies, you can guess at the landslides that must have occurred. Those big boulders have come here and settled. Some are as big and tall as the Chiu Gompa itself.”

“We are not so lucky at my village, for the monsoon and winter is part of our lives. Our families and their settlements move to the lower plains in the monsoon and winter. What are the lower plains, do you know?” the senior monk asked, and continued, “The lower plains are much higher than Ladakh or your Uttarakhand. For us, it is as far as we can escape. That’s all. My grandfather who had gone in search of the source of the great river had said that old stories spoke about the place as ‘the lion that roared and allowed the river to flow from its mouth’. It must have been due to the great sound that the mountain streams create when they flow through the deep valleys.”

Vijay was trying to picture the flooding of the valley of the kora in the winter, and he did not wish to look impolite to the senior monk who was explaining about the valleys of his village and the mountain streams in those locations. He was wondering if the two different perspectives would converge and there was something significant in this discussion with the senior monk. He spoke to the senior monk, “If it was to be ‘the lion that roared’, I think it would be very specific to a single location. There has to be an absolutely single location from where the most logical source of the great river would emerge. But, I agree with you, that there must have been untimely flooding of the valley of the kora, perhaps once in fifty or hundred years.”

“Yes. My grandfather said that he had indeed been to such a place.” the senior monk replied, “He had gone with some of the elders from our village and escorted the monks from the Gompa nearby. They spoke about it for some years later, and the monks made a record of the place that they had seen. The parchments and the map and sketches have been kept as a secret for fear that people from other lands or people from ours who would not respect the sacred aspect would go in and destroy the place. The great river is born from our lands, as are the other great rivers from all around the sacred valleys of the Mount Kailash, as you call it. We have many names and we have names for all the various valleys and springs.”

Vijay was intrigued. This conversation was being spoken in a very deliberate manner, he thought. The senior monk did not seem to be as dispassionate or as confusing as he thought him to be. He just had a different manner of explaining a point. Vijay asked, “Are those parchments, maps and sketches kept in your village or in the nearby Gompa? Who would take care of them? Have you seen them? Do those sketches show the Mount Kailash in the region of the source of the great Indus River? Have you gone to explore those secret valleys?”

The senior monk, Loga of the Kla-Chu as he wanted to be called, replied, “No, my friend, Vijay, I was not able to walk to the Lion and have not seen the mouth of the Lion. All those parchments, maps and sketches were kept carefully by the monks from the local Gompa. When they knew that I had become a senior monk, they gave the entire set to me for safekeeping. I have those maps, drawn in our style, with the names of those places in our languages. It is in our concept of north or south, not like yours. But, they retain the key to many of the mysteries of this land. Would you like to see these parchments and the maps? You may be interested to, no?”