So on day 12, the 48 km Kailash Parikrama starts with chants of Om Namah Shivay and bam-bam bhole. The bus drops us by Yam Dwara, 7 km from Darchen and upon reaching there, pony and porters are allotted and the 12 km trek to Deraphuk begins. There is a small Yam temple here and usually old clothes are offered and from here the trek is mostly leveled till Deraphuk. The trek is beautiful, windy and wide with many small streams and waterfalls with rock cliffs all around and some of them having inscription of Buddhist mantras on them.
The parikrama route is open and clockwise from South at Darchen to West at Deraphuk and is subject to brisk winds. The air is so nippy and chilled that even in days its hard to take your gloves and monkey cap off. As we progress the face of Kailash changes from mystic pyramidal at Ashtapad to Shivlingam at Charan Sparsh.
En route we met trekkers from Japan, Korea and China; they were mostly Buddhists as Kailash is also revered by Buddhists and Jains.
This trek is more or less a leveled walk and the only thing to negotiate is the thin air as almost the entire route lies on an average 5000 mets elevation. The path is very windy and it’s easy to get dehydrated very quickly, also one doesn’t get anything to eat in between. There are many Tibetans too who come for this Parikrama at this time and offered us something that looked like the Yak’s cheese and in return we offered them some dry fruits.
I started today’s trek along with Anurag, Sri Ram, Priyanshu and Guptaji and in no time Anurag and Sri Ram are quite ahead of us, they are certainly fitter, infact two of the most fit lads in the entire batch. Guptaji seems as cheerful as ever but is struggling with the broken strap of his back pack and this made him slow. As we progress I observe we are not talking as much as though we are sensing something that made us quiet. This landscape is like nothing we have witnessed so far, deprived of anything or everything, even big mountains. This is trans Himalayan region and Kailash is the only significant mountain there standing all alone and seems imparting some wisdom in to us, "In order to come to me you have to leave: thoughts, ego, friends, enemies, good and bad; be nothing and be everything, be Shunya and be Shiv.”
जय भोलेनाथ । हर हर महादेव ।।
We reached Deraphuk chanting Jai BholeNath, Har-Har Mahadev. These strange names; Darchen, Deraphuk and many more you will encounter shortly are given by Buddhists as for us names don’t matter; the entire region is sacred and they only reveal different faces of this mystic mountain. Deraphuk is at an elevation of 5060 mts and means Cave of the female Yak's Horn. From here the view of Mount Kailash is magnificent and also the closest during entire Parikrama. When illuminated by the rays of setting sun it looks just spectacular. It’s the north or north-west side of Mount Kailash so the order of Parikrama is like South- West-North-East, clockwise.
This face is also called Charan Sparsh. It’s a 2 km steep climb from the camp and if time permits you can go and touch the feet (the snout of Glacier). We were not able to touch and could only make up to few hundred meters as there were some restrictions going further by Chinese at that year. So basically it depends on permissions and normally they permit Yatris to Charan Sparsh.
A constant stream of water flows from Charan Sparsh and along with the waters of Parvati Kund and Manasarovar, Yatris also carry it. It’s not possible to carry much food there for these three days and that leaves us with Tehri and Maggi (there were no restrictions on 2014 not sure now) as the best choice for two days. The camp here looks like an aluminum/fiber structure with five or six rooms in a series with basic wooden beds and quilts.
Don't expect toilets for three days during Parikrama and better find a place and it’s really, really hard to find one in this sacred land. My advice: just close your eyes and you will feel less regret.