Tibet: Kailash and Manasarovar

01The abode of Mahadev

For Shaivas, Kailasa is the seat of Bhagwan Shiva and Mata Parvati, where Mahadev sits in unbroken dhyana; the Puranas place there the court of his ganas and the treasure-city of Kubera, Alaka, close by. The Ramayana tells how Ravana tried to lift the mountain and was pinned under it by Shiva’s toe until he sang his way free, the scene the Rashtrakuta carvers set in stone at Ellora. The lake below is Manasa Sarovara, the lake of the mind, made by Brahma as the home of his hamsa, the swans that stand in Sanskrit poetry for the soul that can tell milk from water. Beside it lies a second lake, salt, which Hindu tradition calls Rakshastal and links with the tapas of Ravana. The Sanskrit name Kailasa may come from kelasa, crystal.

02Four rivers from one roof

Kailash stands 6,638 metres high in the Gangdise range of the Transhimalaya, in the far west of the Tibetan plateau, just north of the point where Bharat, Nepal and Tibet meet. Within a stretch of about sixty kilometres around it rise four of the great rivers of the subcontinent: the Indus, the Sutlej, the Yarlung Tsangpo that becomes the Brahmaputra, and the Karnali that joins the Ganga as the Ghaghara. Manasarovar covers about 320 square kilometres, is about 88 kilometres round and up to 100 metres deep, and is among the highest large freshwater lakes in the world. A channel, the Ganga Chhu, carries its overflow into Rakshastal. No one is recorded to have climbed Kailash, and the Chinese government forbids it.

Place · Abode of Bhagwan Shiva; lake made from Brahma’s mind, as the Puranas tellKailash and MansarovarThe snow peak in western Tibet that Hindus know as the home of Shiva and Parvati, with the lake of Mansarovar at its foot. Jains, Buddhists and Bon followers hold it holy too, and no one has climbed it.Read →

03One mountain, four faiths

The mountain is holy to four faiths at once. Jains call it Ashtapada and hold that Rishabhadeva, the first Tirthankara, attained nirvana there. Tibetan Buddhists call it Kang Rinpoche, the precious snow mountain, the dwelling of Demchok, Chakrasamvara, and the axis of the world, Meru. For the followers of Bon, the old religion of Tibet, it is where Tonpa Shenrab came down from heaven, and they walk round it anticlockwise, while Hindus and Buddhists go clockwise. The parikrama, the kora, starts from Darchen, passes the Dirapuk monastery under the north face, crosses Dolma La at about 5,630 metres, and comes down by Zuthulphuk. Pilgrims who can also walk round Manasarovar, about ninety kilometres, and bathe in its water, which the Shastras say washes away sin.

04Zorawar Singh at Taklakot, 1841

In May 1841 General Zorawar Singh, the Dogra commander who had already taken Ladakh and Baltistan for Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu, marched into western Tibet with a few thousand men. He took Gartok and pushed on to Taklakot, the market town of Purang on the Karnali close to Manasarovar. Winter came early; a Tibetan and Chinese army gathered, and in December 1841, at To-yo near Taklakot, his frozen and outnumbered force was broken and he was killed. The war ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Chushul, which left the old border between Ladakh and Tibet where it had been. For more than a century after that, Bhotia traders of the Kumaon valleys of Byans, Darma and Johar kept the trade with the Tibetan marts, and pilgrims walked with them.

Person · 1784–1841 CEZorawar Singh KahluriaA Rajput of Kahlur (Bilaspur) in the Himalayan foothills, Zorawar Singh served Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu and led his armies over the Himalaya into Ladakh from 1834 and Baltistan in 1840. He fell in western Tibet in December 1841, near Mansarovar, with his army caught by the winter.Read →

05Closed in 1962, open again in 1981

The agreement on trade and intercourse between India and the Tibet region of China, signed in Peking on 29 April 1954, allowed pilgrims of the Hindu, Buddhist and Lamaist faiths to visit Kailas and Manasarovar ‘in accordance with custom’. It expired in June 1962, and after the war of that year the road was shut. In 1981 the Ministry of External Affairs and the Chinese government opened an organised yatra through the Lipulekh pass in Pithoragarh, and in 2015 a second route through Nathu La in Sikkim was added. Pilgrims go in batches of about fifty. The yatra stopped in 2020 with the pandemic and the border crisis, and resumed on 13 June 2025 with 750 pilgrims in fifteen batches, five by Lipulekh and ten by Nathu La. For 2026 the ministry announced a thousand pilgrims by both routes; Nepal, which claims the Lipulekh area, objected to the use of that route.

06The road by Gunji and Om Parvat

The Lipulekh route begins at Dharchula in Pithoragarh district and climbs the gorge of the Kali through Tawaghat, Gala and Budhi to Gunji, at about 3,200 metres the last large village, and on by Kalapani to Nabhidhang, at about 4,270 metres the last camp in India. From Nabhidhang pilgrims see Om Parvat, where the snow lies on the rock in the shape of Om. The Kumaon Mandal Vikas Nigam keeps the rest huts along the way. An eight-kilometre climb leads to the pass, at about 5,334 metres, and down into Tibet towards Taklakot. In 2020 the Border Roads Organisation completed a road from Dharchula to the pass, and in 2023 began a short road from Nabhidhang to a viewpoint from which Kailash itself can be seen from Indian soil.

Dynasty · 1822–1952 CE (Maharajas of Jammu and Kashmir from 1846)Dogras of Jammu and KashmirGulab Singh, a Dogra Rajput in Ranjit Singh’s service, was made Raja of Jammu in 1822 and Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir by the treaty of Amritsar in 1846. His general Zorawar Singh carried the Dogra flag across Ladakh to the edge of Tibet, and his great-grandson Hari Singh signed the state into India in October 1947.Read →