Mt. Kailash considered as one of the ten most beautiful mountains in Nepal and a divine mountain universally by people from all over the world. Its shape is like the pyramids in Egypt with four nearly symmetrical sides. Its glistening snow-covered top makes it the most eye-catching one. Around this sacred mountain, there are five temples in total. All the temples shrouded by mystery and legends.

Mount Kailash surrounded by five monasteries. These are Nyari Monastery, Drirapuk Monastery, Songchu Monastery, Guangzhou Monastery and Thailong Monastery. Nyari is the first site on the Kailash Kora and the last two are located on the inner kora. Each monastery endowed with different legendary stories and decorated by distinctive sculptures, statues, murals, thangkas and other Tibetan cultural objects. 

This is a supremely sacred site of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Ayyavazhi religions and billions of people.

Hindus believe Mt. Kailash to be the abode of Lord Shiva, the destroyer of ignorance and illusion, resides at the summit of this legendary mountain, where he sits in a state of perpetual meditation along with his wife Parvati. They do regard that the peak Mt. Kailash as Shiva’s symbolic ‘Lingam’ and worship Mt Kailash, which is the Sanskrit name for the mountain.

Jains believe it to be the place where Rishaba, the first of the twenty-four Tirthankaras attained liberation. They call this mountain as Meru Parvat or Sumeru or Astapada

Tantric Buddhists believe that Mount Kailash is the home of the Buddha Demchok, who represents supreme bliss.

Bonpos believe the sacred mountain to be the place where the founder of the Bon religion landed when he descended from the sky. The Bona religion that predates Buddhism in Tibet, maintain that the entire mystical region and the nine-story Swastika Mountain are the seats of all spiritual power. Followers of Bon, Tibet’s pre-Buddhist, shamanistic religion call the mountain Tise and believe it to be the seat of the Sky Goddess Sipaimen. Additionally, Bon myths regard Tise as the sight of a legendary 12th century battle of sorcery between the Buddhist sage Milarepa and the Bon shaman Naro Bon-Chung. Milarepa’s defeat of the shaman displaced Bon as the primary religion of Tibet, firmly establishing Buddhism in its place. While the Buddha believed to have magically visited Kailash in the 5th century BC, the religion of Buddhism only entered Tibet, via Nepal and India, in the 7th century AD.

Tibetan Buddhists believe Kang Rinpoche, which means Precious Snow Mountain, is a natural mandala representing the Buddhist cosmology on the earth and regard it as the dwelling place of Demchog (also known as Chakrasamvara) and his consort, Dorje Phagmo. Three hills rising near Kang Rimpoche believed to be the homes of the Bodhisattvas, Manjushri, Vajrapani, and Avalokiteshvara.

Most pilgrims to Kailash will also take a short plunge in the nearby, highly sacred (and very cold) Lake Manosaravar. The word ‘manas’ means mind or consciousness; the name Manosaravar means Lake of Consciousness and Enlightenment. Adjacent to Manosaravar is Rakas Tal or Rakshas, the Lake of Demons. Pilgrimage to this great sacred mountain and these two magical lakes is a life-changing experience and an opportunity to view some of the most magical scenery on the entire planet. Pilgrims do focus to get in touch with nature and with the silence on the mountain Kailash.

After the difficult journey getting there, then confronted with the equally arduous task of circumambulating the sacred peak. This walking around the mountain clockwise for the Buddhists, counter-clockwise for Bon adherents is Kora or Parikrama and normally takes three days.

A few practising secret breathing techniques is Lung-gom. This will power them around the mountain in only one day. Others will take two to three weeks for the Kora by making full body prostrations the entire way. It believed that a pilgrim who completes 108 journeys around the mountain assured enlightenment.

For Tibetans, pilgrimage refers to the journey from ignorance to enlightenment, from self-centeredness and materialistic preoccupations to a deep sense of the relativity and interconnectedness of all life. The Tibetan word for pilgrimage is a neighbour. This means “to circle around a sacred place,” for the goal of pilgrimage is less to reach a particular destination than to transcend through inspired travel the attachments and habits of inattention that restrict awareness of a larger reality……..By travelling to sacred sites, Tibetans are brought into living contact with the icons and energies of Tantric Buddhism. The neys or sacred sites themselves, through their geological features and the narratives of transformation attached to them, continually remind pilgrims of the liberating power of the Tantric Buddhist tradition…….Over time pilgrimage guidebooks were written, giving instructions to pilgrims visiting the holy sites and accounts of their history and significance. These guidebooks neyigs empowered Tibet and its people with a sacred geography, a narrated vision of the world ordered and transformed through Buddhist magic and metaphysics.

From the 7th century, when Tibet began to emerge as a unified nation, the country enjoyed relative autonomy. However, in 1950, Communist China invaded Tibet. The Tibetan government, headed by the recently enthroned 14th Dalai Lama, forced to sign an agreement for the “peaceful liberation” of Tibet or face further military action. In 1959, following a failed Tibetan uprising, the Dalai Lama fled to India and established a government in exile. At that time, the Hindu pilgrimage route to Kailash closed. China abolished the Tibetan government and imposed societal changes based on Marxist principles. The situation worsened during China’s Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, when religious practice was forbidden and Chinese forces set about destroying Buddhist and Bon monasteries, including six at Mount Kailash. In the mid-1970s, China began to soften its stance and by the ’80s, Tibetans had regained some religious freedom. Monasteries that destroyed began to reopen and confiscated religious artefacts returned. Indian pilgrimages to Kailash resumed, and in 1984, the area around Kailash officially opened to Western visitors. 

Is Mount Kailash is the centre of the world?

It has been universal interest in discovering the world hidden, mysterious and unknown wisdom of Mount Kailash. Recent studies of Russians reveal that the Mt. Kailash could be vast; it is like a human-built pyramid, the centre of an entire complex of smaller pyramids, a hundred in total. This complex, moreover, is the centre of a worldwide system connecting other monuments or sites where paranormal phenomena observed. Goole Maps and NASA pictures reveal that the Mount Kailash is the axis mundi, world axis, centre of the world, and the navel of the world. A glimpse at Mount Kailash reveals that it is the centre of the Earth.

Both geography and mythology play roles in the sacred significance of Mount Kailash. This holy mountain rises to an altitude of 6714 meters. It cannot compete with peaks in the nearby Himalayan range, which includes Mount Everest, and its grandeur lies not in height but in its distinct shape – four sheer faces marking the cardinal points of the compass – and its solitary location, free of neighbouring mountains that might dwarf or obscure it.

Vedas mentioned Mount Kailash as cosmic axis and world pillar, the centre of the world, and world tree. It has other names…Meru, Sumeru, Sushumna, Hemadri, Deva Parvata, Gana Parvata, Rajatadri, and Ratnasanu. Kang Tisé or Kang Rinpoche (the ‘Precious Jewel of Snow’ in Tibetan), Meru (or Sumeru), Swastika Mountain, Mt. Astapada, Mt. Kangrinboge (the Chinese name) – all these names, real or legendary, belong to one of the holiest and most mysterious mountains in the world – Mount Kailash. In religion or mythology, the world centre or the connection is between Heaven and Earth. As the celestial pole and geographic pole, it expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. 

The idea of the pyramid in this region is not new. It goes back to the timeless Sanskrit epic of the Ramayana. Since then, numerous travellers, especially in the beginning of the 20th century, have expressed the view that Mt. Kailash is too perfect to be a totally natural phenomenon, or at any rate, give the appearance of human intervention.

The interest has been universal.

Is it the beauty of the mountains or the mysticism? The desire to find the remains of lost civilizations or the desire to learn how to acquire extreme power so as to govern the world?

Legends of a mythic land spread throughout the centuries and became of interest to philosophers, adventurers, theologists and even… political leaders! It received many names: Shambhala, Shangri-La, etc., and many locations suggested the Tibet plateau, the Gobi desert, the Altai, but the Mount Kailash range is most frequently named.

This adventure is one that tops many people’s bucket list. Those who want to climb to the top of it, all of a sudden get set to go in the opposite direction. Those who walked up the mountain never returned. In fact, there have been no recorded attempts to climb Mount Kailash due to its near perpendicular wall faces and death-defying weather. Its distinct shape of four sheer faces marking the cardinal points of the compass. The peak is very pointed and looks like a pyramid piercing the sky. It was found that it is an extremely difficult task since the mountain is difficult to access and dangerous. This geographic site is like energy vortices that can either uplift physical and mental states or degenerate the clamber.

Tsar Nikolai Romanov had some connection with Tibet through the monk Badmaev, who was himself closely associated with a highly placed Tibetan, the lama Agvan Dordzhiyev, tutor and confidant of the 13th Dalai Lama. Dordzhiyev equated Russia with the coming Kingdom of Shambhala anticipated in the Kalachakra texts of Tibetan Buddhism. The lama opened the first Buddhist temple in Europe, in St. Petersburg, significantly dedicated to Kalachakra teaching. One of the Russian artists who worked on the St.Petersburg temple was Nicholas Roerich, who introduced by Dordzhiyev to the legend of Shambhala and to eastern thought. George Gurdjieff, another mystic who had some impact on Western thought, knew Prince Ukhtomsky, Badmaev, and Dordzhiyev. Gurdjieff accused by the British of being a Russian spy in Central Asia, a pupil of the mysterious Tibetans. Even Marx had contacts with Tibetan lamas, as did Lenin who met some of them in Switzerland.

What were these people interested in and what attracted them to Tibet?

Not only contacts with lamas, but even expeditions were organised in this area. What, for example, brought about the odd juxtaposition of Tibetan lamas and German SS officers on the eve of World War II? The search for lost remnants of an imagined Aryan race hidden somewhere on the Tibetan plateau? Or some other reason? It is known that Nazi leaders such as Heinrich Himmler believed that Tibet might harbour the last of the original Aryan tribes, the legendary forefathers of what was considered the German race whose Aryan leaders were supposed to possess supernatural powers that the Nazis thought they could use to conquer the world. Ideas about an Aryan or master race began to appear in the popular media in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, E. B. Lytton, a Rosicrucian, wrote a best-selling novel around the idea of a cosmic energy (particularly strong in the female sex), which he called «Vril.» Later he wrote of a Vril society, consisting of a race of super-beings that would emerge from their underground hiding places to rule the world. The Vril Society claimed to have links to Tibetan masters, apparently drawing on the ideas of Madame Blavatsky, the theosophist, who supported the existence of super-beings in a mystic land which she described in such well-known works as the Secret Doctrine. She claimed to be in telepathic contact with spiritual masters in Tibet and confirmed that she was receiving this information from them. Nikolai Roerich went to the region of Tibet where he spent several years. He may have been inspired by Kalachakra teaching and legends of Shambhala while working at the painting of St.Petersburg temple, described above. His painting “The Path to Kailash” can be seen in the New York museum dedicated to his work. He devoted many years to the search for this mystic land.

Several intellectuals tried to discover the world hidden, mysterious and unknown wisdom of Mount Kailash. Many researchers believe that the foot and at the middle level of the mountain has voids. The researchers found the presence of cavities inside the sarcophagus, means “flesh-eating” that serves as a refuge in which a state of deep meditation. Many of these people were ready to believe in the existence of the supernatural in whatever form – higher intelligence, power, or energy. This interest remains strong to this day in many countries, to find this axis mundi, the most powerful place, the highest power, or the hidden intelligence in whatever form it exists if indeed it does. In 2001, the Chinese gave permission for a Spanish team to climb the peak, but in the face of international disapproval, the Chinese decided to ban all attempts to climb the mountain.

What is the hidden mystery of Mount Kailash?

To get authentic inform calls for a deep research. Several intellectuals tried to discover the world hidden, mysterious and unknown wisdom of Kingdom of Shiva. Many researchers believe that the foot and at the middle level of the mountain has voids. The researchers found the presence of cavities inside the sarcophagus, means “flesh-eating” that serves as a refuge in which a state of deep meditation. This adventure is one that tops many people’s bucket list. Those who want to climb to the top of it, all of a sudden get set to go in the opposite direction. Those who walked up the mountain never returned. In fact, there have been no recorded attempts to climb Mount Kailash due to its near perpendicular wall faces and death-defying weather. Its distinct shape of four sheer faces marking the cardinal points of the compass. The peak is very pointed and looks like a pyramid piercing the sky. It is an extremely difficult task since the mountain is difficult of access and dangerous. This geographic site is like energy vortices that can either uplift physical and mental states or degenerate the clamber. 

What does the literature say?

The literature gives specific and at times startling evidence of intimate knowledge of the regions. In the Ramayana and Mahabharata, we find the older four-fold division of the earth according to their orientation to Mt. Meru or to Bharata.  In these epics, Mt. Meru is a geographic reality located east of Jambudvipa (the Indian subcontinent). The Mahabharata states that Sakadvipa, Svetadvipa and the Milky Ocean are located to the east of Meru. In the eastern quarter found the location of Sakadvipa in the astrological text Brhat Parasara Hora Sastra. Mt. Meru equated with the North Pole. All the Puranas that mention Sakadvipa agree that the Milky Ocean surrounds the island/continent. The ethnic- geographic and bio-geographic material, largely agrees with the epics.  

Rig Veda 3.23.4 states Mount Meru is the central region. The entire Cosmos divided into seven concentric island continents surrounded by oceans. It comprises of Jambudvipa, Plaksadvipa, Salmalidvipa, Kusadvipa, Krouncadvipa, Sakadvipa, and Pushkaradvipa. They separated by the seven encircling oceans, each double the size of the preceding one. These seven intermediate oceans consist of salt-water, sugarcane juice, wine, ghee, curd, milk, and water respectively. Jambudvipa divided into four vast regions shaped like four petals of a lotus with Mount Meru being located at the centre like a pericarp. On the summit of Mount Meru or Sumeru, is the vast city of Lord Brahma, known as Brahmapuri. Surrounding Brahmapuri are eight cities – the one of Lord Indra and of seven other Devas. On the four sides of the great Mount Meru are four mountains–Mandara, Merumandara, Suparsva, and Kumuda–which are like its belts. The length and height of these mountains calculated to be 80,000 miles.

Rig Veda 3.23.4 also states that east of Sumeru (Mt. Meru) is the ocean of milk, in which there is a white city on a white island where Lord Shiva can be seen sitting with his consort Parvati.

Rig Veda 9.63.5 mentioned Lord Shiva as Yogic Indra and father of Maruts is the supreme deity, son of Aditi. His home situated on Mount Meru in the heaven. The area around this great mountain is the source of four life-giving rivers; the Indus, Brahmaputra, Sutlej and Karnali, which is a major tributary of India’s sacred Ganges, begin here. Four great rivers go around the world. These are divisions of Ganges River. These are Alakananda its Sothern branch, Sita to the east, which identified with Yellow River of China, the Chakshu to the west, identified with the Oxus River of Central Asia, and the Bhadra to the north, identified with Ob River of Siberia. These are the main rivers of the Tibetan plateau in four directions. The Meru region or Ilavrita marked by four great lakes.

To enhance the symbolic mysticism of the mountain as a sacred place, two lakes situated at the base of the mountain. The higher lake Manasarovar (one of the highest freshwater lakes in the world), is the sacred lake and is round like the sun. It related to the lake Manas in the Kashmir.  The lower lake Rakhast Tal (one of the highest salt-water lakes) is the devil’s lake and has the shape of the crescent moon.  These two lakes represent solar and lunar forces, good and negative energies respectively. Most importantly, the lake below Mount Kailash is the origin of the Sutlej, which flow to the south and west and eventually into the Indus. It was the largest tributary of the Vedic River Saraswati and its smaller branches rising from Ambala hills in north India.

If we examine the region of Mount Kailash, we find that all the main rivers of north India originated nearby. Indus is the main river of western India; the Brahmaputra is the main river of the east that starts to the west and east of Kailash less than hundred and fifty miles from each other. They flow in the opposite directions and then south and enter at the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal over fifteen hundred miles apart. The Ganges and Yamuna also arise from the mountains south of Kailash. Ghaghara, which identified with Vedic Sarayu.

These Vedic Rivers are the primary rivers of Himalayas and centred in the Kailash- Manasarovar region. There is so much to learn from the Kingdom of Shiva.

Kailash is a rather small member of the Himalayas. The name of this stupendous range stems from Himavat, the father of Lord Shiva’s bride, Parvati. 

Mt. Kailash is most bewitching! Its beauty is overpowering and from a spiritual point of view, it possesses a subtle magnetic vibration of a supremely high order. Mt. Kailash is the abode of Shiva and Parvati, along with Devas, Ganas, Yakshas, Yogis, Siddha Purushas and Gandharvas. Mention of the Mt. Kailash Yatra made in the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Skanda Purana etc…. Kalidasa has mentioned about this holy Yatra in his Meghaduta. In the book ‘Yoga, Enlightenment and Perfection’ describing the thrilling spiritual experiences of Jagadguru Sri Abhinava Vidyatheertha Maha Swami – 35th Shankaracharya of Sri Sringeri Sharada Peetham, the Swamiji himself has stated that the night he took Sanyasam at his thirteenth year, he had a dream. “I found myself on the amazingly scenic summit of a tall, Ice clad Mountain… Though the mountain was icy I felt no cold. In front of me, I saw a huge crystal Shiva Linga… suddenly there was a great flash of light and from the Linga Lord Shiva manifested. The lord had one face and two arms”. The hill referred in this dream is, of course, Kailash and the crystal Linga refers to the crystal mount, which is again Mt. Kailash. He liberated while alive. Very few get to even hear of such a state and after hearing about it a much smaller fraction can comprehend it. To understand such a mindset requires a dimensional change in the manner of attitudes.

The kingdom of Shiva possesses a subtle magnetic vibration of a supremely high order. It is a mountain of solid gold shining as brilliantly as fire. It is of 21,778 feet high. It is square with four sides larger at the top than at the bottom. It surrounded by these eight mountains. On the southern side of Mount Meru are two mountains named Kailash and Karavira, which extend east and west for 144,000 miles, and on the northern side, extending for the same distance east and west, are two mountains named Trisrnga and Makara. The width and height of all these mountains are 16,000 miles. On the eastern side of Mount Meru are Jathara and Devacuta, which extend to the north and south for 144,000 miles. Similarly, on the western side, two mountains are Pavana and Pariyatra, which also extend north and south for the same distance.

Kila+ Asa is Kailash. Kila is really and Asa is the seat, hope, desire, space, and region. Kailash is a particular form of a temple, a mountain peak in Himalaya. It also means “crystal,” the ‘Treasure or Saint of Snow Mountain’ and is a “precious jewel of snows.” The kingdom of Shiva is an entire complex of smaller pyramids, a hundred in total. This world pillar is mysterious mountains in the world, all earthly forces of power and greed forever sealed, and knowledge kept hidden. The universe is made of many such worlds.

Its four sides are made of four different precious substances: the south of lapis-lazuli, the west of ruby, the north of gold and the east of crystal and the southern side of Mount Meru is blue, this explains why the seas around and the sky above us is blue. The shine of the blue lapis-lazuli reflects on the marine waters in front. Each of Mount Kailash’s faces reflects different moods. The southern face fully covered with snow It reflects majesty or splendour. The shadow cast by the rocky outcrops on it draws a huge swastika, the seat of all power.

An aura of compassion and benevolence is enveloping on the western face. The northern face is stark, forbidding, and daunting whiles the eastern, only visible from a long way off, and is mysterious and distant. Upon hitting the surface, it reflects and appears in the space above. So rather than there being something blue above us, space appears blue because of the reflection of the lapis-lazuli. Similarly, the oceans and the sky are respectively red, yellow, and white in the West, North, and East directions of Mount Meru.

At the foot of the mountain at about 15, 000 feet in Lake Manasarovar, a fifteen-mile-wide circle of deep blue, which is the feminine complement to the male symbol that is the mountain. Kailash and Mansarovar Yatra by Helicopter designed to all the pious pilgrims who cross-oceans and continents in order to have a glimpse of the abode of Lord Shiva in a short time and a bit easy way. Yet, Kailash visited by no more than a few thousand pilgrims each year. This curious fact explained by the mountain’s remote location in far western Tibet. No planes, trains or buses journey anywhere near the region and even with rugged over-land vehicles the journey still requires weeks of difficult, often dangerous travel. The weather, always cold, can be unexpectedly treacherous and pilgrims must carry all the supplies they will need for the entire journey.

Only the enlightened mind, free from the passions can claim the Kailash as it is not possible with a physical body. The person who destroyed the ignorance and illusion can reach Kailash within the mind, the Manas as the source of soul and takes a dip in the Manasarovar as the consciousness. Just as the physical mountain, Kailash considered as the centre of the known world, so Shiva is the centre of the Self. Reaching calls for complete surrender of all the mental passions. To understand such a mindset requires a dimensional change in the manner of attitudes.