Around the Unmoving – Kailash Mansarovar Series

A Physician’s Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, in Three Parts

Mount Kailash does nothing.

It has stood in the freezing wind since the floor of an ancient ocean was pushed into the sky, 30 million years ago. It does not move. It does not speak.

And yet, century after century, fragile breathing creatures like us push our bodies to the edge of survival simply to walk in circles around it.

In July 2026, I walked the Parikrama. Forty two kilometres, a pass at 18,600 ft (5,670 m), and a door named after the God of Death. I went as a physician, trained to measure the world in heart rates and metabolic panels. I came back with a stone in my pocket that used to be the floor of an ocean, and a silence I have not been able to explain away.

This is that journey, told in three essays and two companion guides.

Part 1: The Silent Witness: Walking the Duality of Kailash

From Yamadwar to the North Face, the mountain belongs to Shiva. Beyond the pass, it belongs to the Mother. A pilgrim’s account of walking through both, of the tears at the first sight of the peak, and of the moment on a scalloped rock where the whole mountain turns upside down.

Read Part 1: The Silent Witness: Walking the Duality of Kailash (Scheduled)

Part 2: Guests in the Thin Air

Gulls that fly in from the Arabian Sea to breed at 15,000 ft. A marmot that carries the plague, and the biscuit I should never have offered it. Yaks that make our presence here possible. A physician looks at who actually belongs on this mountain, and concludes it is not us.

Read Part 2: Guests in the Thin Air (Scheduled)

Part 3: What the Pass Takes

36,000 steps. 205 vertical flights. Every one of them paid for in hypoxic currency. The crossing of Dolma La at 18,600 ft (5,670 m), the emerald water of Gauri Kund, and the grace of the descent. What the mountain takes from you, and what it sends you home carrying.

Read Part 3: What the Pass Takes (Scheduled)