Mount Kailas, its reputation near-legendary. To pilgrims of four religions this 22,028-foot rock pyramid is the throne of the gods and the ‘Navel of the Earth’, a place where the divine takes earthly form. For well over a thousand years, pilgrims have journeyed here to pay homage to the mountain’s mystery, circumambulating it in an ancient ritual of devotion that continues to this day.

Here at Kailas the mythic image of Meru, the great mountain at the centre of the universe, has come to rest. Rooted in the seventh hell. Piercing through to the highest heaven, Mount Meru appears at the heart of Asian religious cosmography. It is the central pivot around which the whole of creation revolves, the ‘World Pillar’ and the ‘First of Mountains’.

Kailas is Meru embodied in ice and stone, and a single circuit erases the sinsof a lifetime. Their faith proclaims that not just the mountain’s ice-capped summit but the entire region is the abode of the gods: a holy land made doubly sacrosanct by the presence of nearby Lake Manasarovar, a fifteen-mile-wide circle of deepest blue which is among man’s most ancient holy sites.

Upon this sublime natural landscape are placed the rock cairns and fluttering prayer flags delineating the geography of faith. Every step of the sacred routes encircling Kailas and Manasarovar has its own legend, every rock, hill and spring its own god: an outpouring of myth and belief which confirms by its very abundance the presence of the sacred.

Hindus cross the frozen mountain passes of India to circle the peak that is Shiva’s throne and bathe in the lake created from the mind – Manas – Brahma. Buddhists journey from Ladakh, Bhutan, Nepal, Mongolia and every corner of Tibet to this holies of mountains they call Kang Rinpoche, the ‘Precious Snow Mountain’. The Jain religious knows Kailas as Mount Ashtapada; atop the summit, its founder, Rishabanatha, gained spiritual liberation. And to the Bonpo, followers of Tibet’s old pre-Buddhist beliefs, it is the ‘Nine-Storey Swastika Mountain’, the mystic ‘soul ’ of the entire region.

Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Bonpo: each holds different beliefs, each sees different gods, but the underlying reality is the same. At this site of natural power the temporal and the eternal unite; the divine takes physical form. Skeptics will see only the barest reality of a 22,028 – foot peak of stratified conglomerate, but to the faithful Kailas is the supreme mountain, and a journey to it is made in the spiritual as well as the earthly realm.

Ancient Tibetans knew their country was inhabited by invisible legions of gods, demons and spirits. They ruled earth, air and water, guarded mountain passes and river fords, dwelt in the hearth of every home and the ridgepole of every tent.

Towering above all these were the mountain gods, the centres of Tibet’s ancient folk religion. A holy peak was a mighty lord: it embodied a region’s ‘soul’ and protected those dwelling in its shadow. Tibet’s first king was said to have descended from heaven onto a mountaintop in response to the prayers of the people; and when their reign was over it was from a mountaintop that the early kings returned into the sky, following a silver cord liking earth and heaven.

From these beliefs a shamanistic religion known as Bon developed in the remote shangshung kingdom of Western Tibet. The soul-mountain of Shang-Shung was an ice-capped pyramid called Kang Tise – later known in the West by its Hindi name, Kailas. Another title was Yungdruk Gu Tseg, the ‘Nine-Storey Swastika Mountain’. To Bonpo, as to Hindus, the swastika was an ancient symbol of power. On the southern face of the sacred mountain a vertical gully intersecting with horizontal striations in the rock emblazoned the sign for the faithful to see.

Bon’s influence dwindled after Buddhism was brought to Tibet from India in the seventh century AD. It became little more than a mirror-image imitation of Tibetan Buddhism, which in its turn was shaped by the older religion’s influences. The legend of the magical battle between the Buddhist saint Milarepa and the Bonpo shaman Naro Bon Chun mythologizes the Kailas region’s transition from Bonpo to Buddhist holy land. With Milarepa’s victory the mountain came under the influence of the Kargyu sect. Beginning in the twelfth century, the Kargyu developed first the mountain, then Lake Manasarovar, as a centre for meditation and retreat. The first of the Kailas-Manasarovar monasteries were built, and Buddhist pilgrims began to journey to the mountain, adding their vision to the Bon concept of Kailas. Atop the mountain they placed Demchog, a powerful tutelary deity of terrifying appearance. In the style of Tantrik deities, he is depicted locked in union with his consort, Dorje Pangmo, whose throne is the small peak of Tijung on the west side of Kailas. Together the pair symbolizes the mystic duality of compassion and wisdom which results in spiritual Enlightenment.

By this time Hindu pilgrims were also tracing the holy path around the mountain. Their connection with Manasarovar is even more ancient, said to stretch back two millennia.

Hindus revere the entire Himalaya as an embodiment of the divine, but the presence of the sacred mountain and lake are the ultimate seal of sanctity upon the range. The Ramayana says: “There is no mountain like Himalchal (Himalaya)”, for in it are Kailas and Manasarover. As the dew is dried up by the morning sun, so are the sins of mankind by the sight of Himalchal.’

Shiva, the Destroyer and Transformer if the Hindu triad, is especially connected with the Himalaya, and his particular home is Kailas. There he sits in the lotus position, a naked ash-smeared ascetic absorbed in meditation. Or he may be shown atop his mountain throne in a less austere form, whiling away eternity with his beautiful wife Parvati on his knee.

Karnali all  had their  sources in the small corner of Western Tibet dominated by Kailas – a geographic  improbability with uncanny parallels to Mount Meru, from whose summit are said to flow four great rivers which water Asia.

As befits a cosmic mountain, Meru is given a spectacular description in the Hindu Vishnu Purana of 200 BC. The mountain’s four faces are oriented to the four directions: the eastern is of crystal, the western if ruby, the southern of lapis lazuli and the northern of gold. The sun, moon and stars take their course about this dazzling central pivot and the multiple tiered realms of heaven, earth and underworld are spread out around it. Atop its summit the sacred River Ganges falls from heaven, and divides into four great rivers which water the four quarters of the earth. Tibetan scriptures also speak of the four rivers issuing from the world mountain: they are the Senge Khambab, the north-flowing ‘River from the Mouth of a Lion’; the Mapchu Khambab, the south-flowing ‘River from the Mouth of a Peacock’, the Tamchok Khambab or ‘Horse-Mouth River’ to  the east and the Langchen Khambab or ‘Elephant-Mouth River’ to the west. These are the names of the four actual rivers of the Kailas region, and at this juncture myth begins to take on overtones of reality; the legendary Meru merges with the actual Kailas.

Thousands of years ago, these rivers were traced to the Kailas plateau.

Despite several decades of attempted repression, Buddhism remains a living tradition in Tibet.

The cosmic mountain was embodied in the ziggurat, a stepped pyramid built as a man-made mountain to link the forces of heaven and earth. From Sumeria the concept of a savred central peak moved both west and east, inspiring the medieval European vision of the tiered realms of heaven and hell and the Oriental concept of Meru. The etymological link between Sumeria and Meru is apparent; a common variant is Mount Sumeru.

The vision if the universal mountain spread across Asia, inspiring centuries of art, architecture and literature. Meru appears in Jain cosmograms and Javanese temples, Japanese mythology and Tibetan paintings. The spire of the Indian shikara and the hemispheric mound of the Buddhist stupa were both influenced by the image of the cosmic mountain; the great stupa of Borobodur in Java is a precise interpretation of Meru in stone.

The concept of Meru filtered inward also, expressed in the form of a mandala, those geometric projections of the universe used by Tantrik cults as meditative tools. The central mountain is symbolized in yoga by the central subtle channel of psychic energy running up the spinal column (which itself is known as meru danda). Ultimately, Meru appears within man himself. In the body of a man is Mount Meru, encircled by the seven continents.  Meru is a spiritual rather than geographical centre. The Mahabharata describes meru as ‘a kingdom of the mind’, ‘a heap of effulgence… immeasurable and unapproachable by men of manifold sins.’