Chapter 1 – Part 2: Watching the Kailash Peak
Sometimes Norbu felt that he would be better back at home at Darchen with his parents at their small store, selling stuff to the pilgrims who came up to the pilgrim paths of this sacred mountain. Judging by the plight of his situation now, at dusk, with the dark rain-storm clouds coming up the Kang Renpoche mountain, Norbu wondered if he would have been much better off in continuing with taking care of the small barley farm plot at their native hamlet away from Darchen. He was not at Darchen, Norbu kept reminding himself. He was in this small canvas and tarpaulin tent, pitched in a small rocky depression, waiting out the night at Dirapuk Gompa.
He was not alone, Norbu thought to himself, and smiled. He had good company, and they were his very good friends of many years. He had known them both since their childhood and they had enormous faith in him. The fourth one in this small tent was a new friend, and yet the other two had accepted him, even if he was unlike them. For that matter, even Norbu was unlike the two yaks that snuggled against each other in this small tent. The fourth one in the tent was a Tibetan Mastiff pup, less than two years of age. In all appearances though, the Mastiff looked more dangerous than the yaks.
Norbu began to prepare for cooking dinner inside the tent. He had seen to it that the yak had grazed on the meadows below the Dirapuk Gompa after the pilgrims had gone to rest in their alpine tents. The yak were content and so was the Mastiff, having been able to get to some meat from the eateries that were in the numerous tents near the Gompa. Norbu dug a hole into the ground inside the tent and arranged fist-sized rocks within it. The hole was about ten inches deep and was soon filled up with brushwood and twigs that he set fire to. Reaching into a dirty cloth bag, he pulled out a couple of dried-out yak dung cakes and added them to the fire.
The warmth of the fire inside the tent felt good, and the rocks lining the hole helped make it better. The yak began breathing more comfortably, thought Norbu, and patted the Mastiff away from the fire. Dinner for him was always taken away from the group of pilgrims and his own boss and master, who stayed in the alpine tents. Norbu and other yak boys like him stayed in makeshift tents and sheds through the night with their animals. It was a strange group of living beings that made sure they survived through the night. Yaks, mules, ponies, mastiffs and yak boys lived together within this small mini-village that sprung up around the Gompas, the government managed guest houses, the private tent areas and the eateries.
Norbu, like other yak boys, stayed through the night with his own animals. The two yaks that he had with him in the tent were owned by his family, and had been brought from their native hamlet from the valleys away from Darchen. His parents kept a small herd of yak at Shiquanhe, near Darchen, and his younger sisters tended to their grazing and other care. He had brought the two yaks on hire to the pilgrim guides for the entire season, to help the pilgrims do the kora, the pilgrimage that circled the great mountain of Kang Renpoche India
Cooking dinner each night by himself, Norbu always felt homesick. He longed for the warm food that his mother would be cooking at this time at Darchen. He knew that his mother would be thinking of her son away on the kora around Kang Renpoche, and she would wonder if by a miracle he could join the family for dinner. For Norbu, his dinner was a makeshift combination of Tsampa, with a bowl of hot watery tea and grilled barley flour. To this, he added some not so rancid butter from a plastic pouch and sprinkled salt with a liberal pinchful. He had kept some water to heat up on the fire, and he drank it up after gulping down the hot Tsampa.
He could hear the wind gathering in strength and they could smell the rain clouds that were gathering around the Kang Renpoche. It would be bad tonight, and what if the rains continued the entire day tomorrow? They were lucky that they could put up their tents and sheds inside this group of rocks on high ground. They would be safe from the gale and the heavy winds. He had come this on this path over the past four years, ever since his father had thought it wise that he should learn this strange new trade of the pilgrimage path. The barley crops were failing and his family had lost their ownership of the few stone silos that his grandfather had constructed to store the harvest from their village. The local government appointed village headman had handed over the ownership to a settler from Kashghar on promise of more income to the village account.
The yak boys knew the winds and the camping grounds on the kora. This pilgrim group was a slow moving one and it made for good income to the families that provided the yaks, ponies and mules. They usually stayed at Dirapuk Gompa, about three kilometers away from the Dolma Pass
From within his tent, Norbu could see the high peaks of Kang Renpoche, or Kailas Parbat, as the pilgrims called it. The winds were blowing the pale white clouds around the high peaks. The snowcap of Kang Renpoche was shining in this dark dark dark night at Dirapuk Gompa. He could not even see the pilgrim camp in the meadow below this rocky hideout, but the snowcap of Kang Renpoche was brilliant. The moon was out of its shadows and had come up in front of the peak, a not-so-thin crescent, with the clouds seeming to try to chase it away. There were waves and waves of clouds that kept throwing the moonlight back and forth on the smaller peaks.
In turn, the lower peaks seemed to twist and turn like a mighty snake around Kang Renpoche. The drizzle seemed to have begun on the peak, and it made the snowcap look even brighter. It was raining heavily on the meadows below the Dirapuk Gompa. Norbu wondered about the day to come. Would they be able to take the pilgrims on the kora? If it rained here, in these high plains, it meant bad roads and a bad day on their path to the Dolma Pass Dolma Pass.
His parents would worry about his health on such nights, but they would not be scared for him, Norbu thought to himself. He was visiting so many neys, and these sacred places would not be places of danger to him and his yaks. His family knew of the Tibetan Mastiff pup that had begun to accompany him from Darchen. It had come up, skinny and starved, to his parents shop near the neykhor in Darchen, and Norbu had fed it from the meat waste that his mother had salted to store away. The Mastiff had fallen in love with the salty taste and seemed to have signed away his life in devotion to Norbu. He had never left him and always looked up in love, though it looked very ferocious and dangerous, even when moving about peacefully.
Norbu had wanted to become a monk, but his parents had refused him permission. The local monastery had agreed with his parents. He was here, now, at night, waiting out the rain, in a makeshift tent at Dirapuk Gompa, with his yaks and mastiff. He wondered about the Kang Renpoche and the various stories that he had heard about the mountain from his parents, from the pilgrim guides, the pilgrims and the policemen of Shiquanhe. Nobody dared to climb the mountain. Nobody even dared to walk up to its foothills. The local policemen, monks and villagers kept a watch out for anyone who would try to do so. They said that nobody had ever returned.
His parents sold the neyigs, the guidebooks to the local sacred places. He could read some of these books and heard from others who could read properly. It spoke of the veneration that all religions had for Kang Renpoche. He had met pilgrims of all types. Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Bon Pos. They came here to walk the kora. Some walked from Darchen to Tarboche to Dirapuk Gompa to Dolma Pass peak of Kang Renpoche
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