On the Roof of the World
My friend, Abhay Maheshwari, and I immediately decided that we should go to Manas but we soon realised that the costs were prohibitive. Never mind, we decided then and there, possibly after a swig of Mohua at a Prem Bazar still, that we would start the process of saving for this trip. Next day, Abhay and I walked up to the Punjab and National Bank branch in Tech Market and opened a joint account with Rs 100 each with the understanding that we would put in Rs 200 each month. This was not easy and to understand why, you need to put things in perspective. Our tuition fees at IIT was Rs 25+12.50 per month for 8 months and the monthly mess bill was around Rs 200. So Rs 100 per month was ambitious and we missed quite a few installments. I do not remember what was the cost of trip but we had calculated that once we passed out and started earning, our accrual of cash would accelerate and we would soon achieve our target and be on our way.
However, things did not turn out that way. Immediately after finishing our B.Tech at IIT, Abhay got a 'schol' to go the US and a year later, I followed suit and the PNB Bank account, with about Rs 1000 was lost forever. Like most of our batchmates, Abhay never returned to India but I did and every year when the Government announced the Yatra I would get the itch. By that time, I had joined Tata Steel and was living in Jamshedpur and I made up my mind to go and waited for the advertisement to appear. When it did, I prepared to apply but Indira was terribly scared that such a journey would end in disaster and put an emphatic stop to my plans. In a sense, she was right because soon thereafter, in 1998, Pratima Gauri Bedi, the noted Odissi dancer, was killed in a landslide on the way to Kailash.
It seemed as if Bhagwan Shiv did not want me anywhere near his abode.
Meanwhile, the Yatra continued and each year we would hear someone or other would have gone there. So once again, in KGP style I raised the "tempo" and we made plans. Instead of the difficult, walking route through Uttarakhand, there were new routes that had been opened from Kathmandu where there was no need to walk. One could take a bus. However, what intrigued me was an even more interesting route that would take us via "The Forbidden City" of Lhasa, the capital of China occupied Tibet. This would allow us to have quick peek at the Potala Palace from where the Dalai Lama would have ruled Tibet before the Chinese occupation.
However, a trip to Kailas was not easy. We would be on a pilgrim visa and the Chinese consulate in Kolkata told us that we would have to apply as a group. So we signed up with a Nepalese tourist agency and first went to Kathmandu where we found ourselves as a part of a group. We spent two days roaming around Kathmandu -- visited the Pashupatinath temple -- as our visas were being processed in Delhi. Then, when we reached the airport, for our flight to Lhasa, we were told that the visa document that our travel agent had procured was a colour photo-copy and not the original and so we were denied boarding. After a lot of acrimonious altercations we were told that the original visa copy had been located in the Delhi office of the travel agent and it would arrive next morning, two hours before our flight -- the revised flight -- was supposed to leave for Lhasa. The entire group was on tenterhooks on whether it would arrive or not but eventually it did! At last, we departed for Lhasa -- just a day behind schedule.
Fortunately, we had a spare day in Lhasa for acclimatization so our schedule was not impacted -- and as you realise soon, the schedule was important! However we missed a whole day of sightseeing in Lhasa and could only see the famous Potala Palace from the outside. But we did realise how important the need for acclimatization was. Lhasa was about 12000 feet and climbing just two flights of stairs to reach the first floor of the hotel left us gasping for breath. Manas Sarowar would be 15,000 feet! Which is why people who take a helicopter flight and go straight to Manas have a very strong chance of suffering a cardiac collapse.
But we took a bus and this was slow and steady drive over the next three days. Our first night stop was at Shigatse, the second was at Saga and then we arrived on the banks of the Manas Sarovar right on the day of the Full Moon! The trip across the vast, and empty cold desert across Tibet, the Roof of the World was fascinating. What hurt us though was the absence of decent food. In Lhasa and Shigatse we still had pretty good hotels but as we travelled further West, the place became cold and desolate. Unless you were comfortable with beef or pork, which we were not, the only other food rice and boiled cabbage. Equally troublesome was the lack of proper toilets. In Sago, we realised that instead of the individual rooms that we had booked we would have to share rooms with another Indian couple and there was no one to argue with because hardly anyone spoke English.
Once in Tibet, each tour operator is required to hand over their guests to a Tibetan travel agency who then take over the entire management. This agency manages the entire logistics and the pilgrim is at their mercy. Not that they are hostile or anything but they are superbly incompetent about anything and since they are a monopoly there is nothing that the tourist can do about any inconvenience. However our Nepalese agents managed to provide us with good, semi-hot food even at those freezing temperatures. Nevertheless, despite these shortcomings, our tempo remained high and I remember our group singing loudly in our bus as it ploughed on through the cold deserted roads towards Manas.
Manas Sarowar was of course worth every discomfort that we had faced. We stayed in a tiny mud-house right on the banks of the lake and watched the Full Moon rise with its own splendour. It was frightfully cold and windy and yet the sight of a million stars was amazing. Our hotel 'manager' told us that his Lakho Tara Hotel was far better than any five star hotel anywhere else. We also performed a parikrama, by bus, of the Mana Sarowar that passed through a narrow strip of land that separates the pure and holy Manas Sarowar from the evil Rakshas Taal, even though we did find anything evil in the second lake. Manas Sarowar is huge, truly huge and you can barely make out the other shore and we had a great time having a bath and generally walking up and down the shore. We had carried our own expedition flag and we got all members of our group to sign it on the lake shore. We also filled up a plastic jerry can of the Lake water with the fervent hope that we would be able to carry it back to Kolkata with us.
After a night and a day at Manas we left for Darchen at the foot of the Kailash Mountain. Here, a smaller and more agile set of people from our group went on foot parikrama of the mountain but Indira and I realised that this would be too tough for us to undertake. In fact, Indira was suffering from mountain sickness and we decided to stay on in Darchen for two nights while the other went on the parikrama. While in Darchen, we went up to the Yama Dwar, the closest point of the Kailash mountain that is reachable on a bus. After that it would be ponies and we stayed away from them.
Kailash - Manas is a once in a lifetime experience but to make the most of it one should go there when one is young and the body is fit. Unfortunately, in the first phase of your life, you have the health and the time, but you do not have the money. In the second phase, you have the health and the money but you do not have the time and in the third and and final phase, you have the money and the time but you do not have the health. We were in third and final phase of our life when we reached Kailas and it is only by the grace of the Divine that we managed to reach as far as we could. Perhaps in the next lifetime, I will perform the parikrama of the Kailash mountain itself. This time I count myself lucky that I could see the full moon rising on the Manas Sarowar.
Jai Shiv Shambhu, Jai Parvati!
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