"Mount Kailas is the most sacred of the world's mountains - holy to one fifth of humanity. Beyond the central Himalayas, claimed to be the source of the universe, its summit has never been scaled, but for centuries it has been ritually circled by Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims. Colin Thubron joins these pilgrims, after a trek from Nepal. He talsk to villagers and to monks in their decaying monasteries; he tells the stories of exiles and of eccentric explorers from the West. Yet there is another dimension in this account: Colin Thubron recently witnessed the death of the last of his family. He is walking on a pilgrimage of his own. His trek awakes an inner landscape of solitude, love, grief, restoring precious fragments of his own origins."--Back cover.