To a Mountain in Tibet(57)

The path lifts high over the river now and winds above a canyon daubed purple and black: the blood of the Devil’s demon yak, it is said, slaughtered by Gesar of Ling. We tramp dazedly above, through scrub and russet shale, staring down precipices of harlequin oddness. Through this palette two pilgrims are moving forward like caterpillars, prostrating on the stones, rising again, their padded hands lifted praying, falling. Their faces are black and muffled: two women, young, tired. One still mumbles prayers with each prostration, the other mews like a kitten. The dust of passing ponies closes their eyes.

I overtake them cautiously, as if skirting some private rite, although they lift their faces and smile. Within an hour I have crested the canyon path, and there opens out beyond me the remembered peace of the Barga plain. Beneath us the diffused headwaters of the Sutlej river are seeping from the slopes a thousand miles before it joins the Indus, and the sky is static with clouds. The kora is closing now, turning along the southern hills of Kailas. Forty miles away, clear across the plateau, the white upheaval of Gurla Mandhata appears, with Rakshas Tal, the demon lake, stretched indigo below, and close at hand a path leads under the last foothills, where pilgrims are walking home.