ABSTRACT
If you are looking for research information about pilgrimage to the Kailash, you may not need to continue reading now. This is a personal account of my travel in the Kailash region, as a student of Indian studies for more than 30 years. Throughout that period Kailash, particularly as the seat of Shiva in meditation and as a faraway ‘extraordinary’ site for my Hindu friends, has been beckoning me. I had the chance to go there in June 1996, and in this article I would like to share some of my experiences, my thrills, and my disappointments. I clearly went there as a pilgrim from the Indian perspective. I was well aware of the belief that your sins are expiated if you do the parikrama, but I had to disappoint my Hindu friends when they asked me what it felt like to be there.
