A Himlyayan Pilgrimage

A few years ago I trekked to Gokyo Ri. It took 8 arduous days to reach the high camp by a lake at the base of Gokyo Ri, not far from Mt Everest.

I met a lady who had made the long trek twice to the holy lake, but failed in her first attempt to reach the summit of the mountain. But on this day she had succeeded, breathing with difficulty in the thin air.

In the distance Mt Everest, Chomolungma, the holy mountain, shone dazzling white. Wisps of snow streamed fiercely from the summit. All around vast craggy mountains, gleaming white snow and bluish ice, jostled together in the greatest mountain range on earth. Prayer flags fluttered in the wind, carrying their messages into the great unknown.

We were almost 5500 metres above sea level, but astonishingly, in this bleak place, an eagle soared in the sky above us.

Seven hundred metres below were the milky blue lake and miniscule tents nestled on its shore. A glacier wound down the valley, an icy dragon slowly edging its way to a distant river, there to melt into waters feeding Mother Ganges, and, at last, to enter the immense ocean.

Next year the monsoons will come again and carry those waters deep into the mountains once more, feeding the snow and glaciers and completing another great, endless cycle - a cycle that lies at the heart of the Buddhist faith.

There is nobility and an example to others that comes from overcoming suffering, and I greatly admired that lady who stood with me on Gokyo Ri, just as I admired the pilgrim who hobbled into Santiago with his injuries.

There is also the universal human need for pilgrimage, to search for something that lies beyond the calculations of reason. Pilgrimge to holy places is a universal yearning of mankind. That is why we walk in the Way of St James, why we trek to holy mountains.