The Mystery of the Kailash Trail - Chapter 6 - Part 5

Book 2: Chapter 6: Part 5: The Beyul team discovers the entrance to the valley

The prayers continued. Brother Tameng and the monk from Dirapuk were concentrating all their efforts to search for answers deep within their mind. Sangye, Dawa, Katishe and Satawa completed the inner circle with the two monks around the prayer books that had been assembled near the fire. Norbu and Yeshe sat outside the circle, while the yak boys and the horse boys sat at a distance. Suddenly, Sangye started rocking to and fro, and started humming loudly, and sat up straight on his knees. He brought his hands to his ears and began to humm in two syllables, repeating the words that sounded like ‘ki’ and ‘cha’, again and again and again.

Brother Tameng and the monk from Dirapuk looked up startled. It seemed as if the spirits of the valley had entered the old man Sangye, and it seemed as if someone else was reciting the humming. Someone, who did not sound like Sangye at all, but sounded more like it was a woman. The drizzle of rain outside the shelter had stopped, and the fog had lifted, as if magically, like it had just been wiped out from a painting where it had existed for thousands of years. The old man Sangye stood up and walked out of the shelter, with the others following him quietly.

For Dawa, Katishe and Satawa, it looked like nothing was wrong or out of the normal. They were used to such divinations of the spirits of the mountains speaking through one of their own. The monks had heard about such events, but had never seen one directly. They did not seem too surprised, but were looking on respectfully, worried, since they did not know how were they to react. They remembered the advice given to them by their Masters, that they should accept whatever that would happen out here, and were not to question any development.

The rocks seemed to be resonating from the sound of the drizzle of rain that had just gone by, and it sounded as if the large boulders were trembling. The sky above was clear, totally without any clouds. The old man Sangye came to stand in front of a huge mass of extremely large boulders and seemed to be crying out his humming sounds and was quivering in a gentle shake of his body. Yeshe looked on at his grandfather, in what was totally unknown to him before, and wondered if he was to worry about him or to stay courageous in his belief that the old man could do no wrong.

Sangye began to humm out the word ‘ki’ loudly, and stopped reciting the word ‘cha’. The sound of his humming began to echo out through the boulders, and the word began to be proclaimed thousands of times, again and again, causing the aspect that the boulders were trembling with extremely clear sound of the word ‘ki’. The skies above were suddenly filled with white clouds and surprisingly, from within these clouds, one dark gale-clad cloud dropped lower into the valley. It started raining heavily through the boulder area, and the place became dark and seemed like night had taken over the day by force.

The group could see the other white clouds above the gale-cloud. A flash of lightning seemed to come out of the dark cloud, but did not strike down, and rather, it hissed out as a straight beam of light, with extremely loud and clear thunder, going away into the valley inside. Brother Tameng and Dawa, standing next to each other, trembled at the sight of the lightning, racing deep inside the valley. The thunder started resonating through the boulders in waves that multiplied upon themselves, thousands of times. All this time, old man Sangye stood near the large boulders, quivering, and humming.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. Thin white clouds began to descend down the valley and a very gentle breeze began to come through the boulders. The valley continued to be in darkness, and yet, as if by magic, light came out through two boulders, curving out like a crown of diamonds on black stone that would never have reflected any form of light. These rays of light were coming through the valley and were being reflected off some strange form of mineral that seemed to cover the inner sides of the boulders. Sangye stopped humming, and pointed, and said in Tibetan, in a dialect that was very ancient, “There, you see what did not exist before. It exists now. There, you see what we saw, and yet we did not see. The very best of warriors of very nature created by the sacred spirits of this valley, the most peaceful warrior of all, peaceful white light. The sacred spirits show us the entrance, the manner in which the light is shown, we will enter.”

The old man Sangye crouched low, and stretched his arms, in the manner of a vulture, and said, “It is here, that we see what we could not see from the ground. It is in the manner of the grey vulture, that we should see from a distance. There is a trail here, and it curves inside these boulders, back and forth, like the lotus would have its petals, we would need to enter from here, and walk through the maze. See the light that shines upon these ancient minerals on the rocks. These are from the sea that covered this ancient land much before the Dharmakaya Amitabha Buddha. It is so said to me in my mind, and I do not know how. Let us make haste.”

The monk from the Dirapuk monastery took control and said, “I will stay here, at the shelter, and will keep Norbu and two boys and their animals with me. One of the boys will go with you for some distance, but send him back with something to mark the way back. We will get more help here, and my brothers will come here, and we will pray here. This is indeed a sacred place, for the manner in which we are permitted to enter, through the very signs of the sacred spirits, it is clear. We need to be respectful in what we do.”

Old man Dawa nodded in agreement and gestured for the team to get ready and start to move through the entrance. Sangye, Katishe and Brother Tameng had started walking inside the space of the trail between the boulders. It seemed to be quite comfortably wide, and it was well used, judging by the smooth passage that it provided. They had not been able to discover it yesterday, when they had arrived in good daylight. It was the lightning and the contrast of the rainstorm with the clear clouds elsewhere, that showed up the entrance. Brother Tameng realized that the light had hit the fossilized layers on the inner side of the boulders, fossils that looked like they were seashells. The light had been reflected from the fossils as if it had hit against a small-enclosed room with a million mirrors.

Yeshe and Satawa rushed around inside the shelter getting the animals loaded up and entered the space between the boulders. It was miraculously comfortable entering the space and it seemed quite silly now that they had not spotted such an opening on the day before. They should have seen it. They had been misled by the play of shadows and dark corners between the boulders and had not been able to realize that there would be adequate space for them to pass through with the heavily laden animals. It was a very comfortable path, as they could see, and they made good progress and met Katishe who gestured for them to stop.

Brother Tameng and Sangye were standing in front of a ledge within one of the boulders, and they seemed to be praying. There was a painting, about ten inches by ten inches, inside the ledge, and it showed an image of that of a very ancient god-like person. He seemed to have been a warrior, judging by the dress that he had worn, and his kingly moustache. He was smiling and his face was radiant. He was a very strong and tall person, Brother Tameng thought. The person was shown sitting on a mountain summit, crouched, as if he would launch himself into the valley and would comfortably fly over it. The person seemed to have been blue in colour. Behind him, there was a cloth banner in white and the painting at this spot was quite damaged.

“He must have been the guardian spirit of the Beyul. I have never seen such an image. There is none like him in all the stories that I have heard of the Amitabha Buddha, or the Sakyamuni or the stories that have been told of Guru Rinpoche. There is great karma here, great siddhi here, and great blessings abound, for the emanations that arise here, from this image, are still in existence. Look at the aspect of the painting. It is out here in the open, within these boulders, and has never been damaged by the rains or the climate of this valley,” said Brother Tameng to Sangye, He is a divine spirit, no doubt, but he is blue in colour. That is strange. But, who are we to question anything that we discover in this valley?”

The team started walking forward. The path kept curving through the boulders but did not seem to open up above. There were boulders above the path, and it was obvious that daylight never entered the space here. Sangye lit a torch, made of branches and twigs, and kept swinging it back and forth in a curious manner. Each time he swung it in front of him, it would flare up, and each time he took it behind him, it would die down. There was a definite current of air up ahead.