A Sacred Circuit in Tibet

MOUNT KAILAS, a white pyramidal mountain in western Tibet, is a mystical locus of four religious groups of Asia: Buddhists, Jains, Hindus and Bonpos, who practice the shamanistic, pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet. Pilgrims from all four come to the scruffy little town of Darchen to perform the 33-mile circumambulation of the mountain.

Kailas, also known as Kailash, is a 22,028-foot mountain in the Himalayas. It is the throne of the Hindu deity Shiva; "the navel of the world" for Hindus and Buddhists; the earthly image of Meru, the mountain whose roots reach to the seventh hell of Buddhist belief and tower to the highest heavens. Buddhists, who call the mountain Kang Rinpoche, associate it with the meditation deity Demchog and the guru-poet Milarepa, who claimed the mountain from the Bonpo practitioner Naro Bonchung in a series of magical competitions. To Jains, it is the place where the first of their founding saints, Rishabha, achieved enlightenment. To Hindus, it is the home of Shiva and Paravati. To Bonpos, it is where the founder of their faith, Tonpa Shenrab, came down to earth.

Four of us, all but one with previous Tibet experience, arrived in Darchen by Land Cruiser after a five-day drive from Lhasa. Like many towns associated with the spiritual in both East and West, Darchen is a squalid hustlers' heaven, particularly in mid-May, the high pilgrimage season, which is when we visited.

Visitors can stay in rooms in spartan hotels, which provide a thermos of hot water and a cot. There are also permanently standing tents on concrete platforms; these are favored by Hindu pilgrims from India - during our stay, long-bearded sadhus in orange dhotis, their hair in top knots, were in residence. That area, where Westerners are also allowed to pitch their tents, was cordoned off from a separate Tibetan campground by a concrete-block wall.

As was once true of the Russians, the Chinese believe in segregating residents from foreigners. A Chinese official assigned us a campsite that we named Cholera Corner, because once a day a man with a spade would appear, dig a trench from the public lavatory on the other side of the wall, wend it between our four tents and then sluice out the day's accumulation. (We had our own toilet tent, as well as a separate dining tent.) Despite our pleading, we were not allowed to camp anywhere else.

Even though Westerners can't pitch their tents in the Tibetan camping area, they are welcome to spend money there; there were numerous informal shops set up in tents in which you could buy everything from mandarin oranges in glass jars to silver-studded saddles. I saw two women admiring a dainty belt adorned with little bells that draped another woman's waist and hips. There was also a tent in which Buddhist services and blessings occur; several other tents housed card games.