Circling the Silence ~A Journey to Kailash
We were four. Not pilgrims, not quite tourists. Companions, maybe. Called from different corners of the world by something unnamed, a pull not of maps but of meaning. Mount Kailash, the untouched peak, waited. Not to be climbed, but to be circled.
From the moment the mountain breached the horizon, something in us quieted. Its white crown shimmered under the thin Tibetan sky, cloaked in a stillness that seemed to hush even the wind. None of us spoke at first. Not from restraint, but reverence. Some places don’t ask for silence. They command it.
Each of us walked the kora differently.
Amara, the seeker, wept without knowing why. She said the mountain felt like a mirror, and every step she took around it peeled something away. Her questions dissolved into the air. Not answered. Just released.
Jonas, the skeptic, found himself slowing. At first, he clocked the altitude, the landscape, the kilometers. But somewhere along the way, the measure slipped from his mind. He stopped tracking. He began listening. The sound of his own breath, the crunch of earth, the flutter of prayer flags. It all began to feel like language.
Mira, the silent one, carried grief. Not out loud, not visibly. But Kailash knew. One morning she sat for hours by a glacier-fed stream, eyes closed, face lifted. She later said it was the first time she felt the weight inside her melt. Like ice meeting sunlight.
And I … I came searching for stories. I left with one too vast to tell.
What we didn’t speak of, but all felt, was this: Kailash did not need us. We were not making a journey; the journey was making us. The mountain stood untouched, unclimbed, wrapped in its own radiance. And we, in walking around it, were brought to touch something just as unreachable inside ourselves.
The four rivers that pour from its feet seemed symbolic of our return paths. Each of us carried something new in a different direction. Not a treasure, but a transformation.
It was not achievement that marked our journey, but surrender. Not reaching a summit, but circling one. Over and over, we met the lesson: humility. That awe is not what you feel when you see something great. It’s what you feel when you remember you are small, and the greatness welcomes you anyway.
Kailash never spoke. But in its silence, it told us everything.
Letters from the Mountain
Amara’s Letter (Hinduism)
Beloved Kailash,
I walked around you barefoot, as one walks the temple of a god. I felt Shiva’s breath in your winds, his stillness in your silence. Each step stripped my soul of expectation. I did not find answers. I found You. You did not speak, but every river flowing from you carried a blessing I cannot name. You are the abode of stillness, and now, so is part of my heart.
Forever circling, Amara
Jonas’s Letter (Buddhism)
Mountain of Silence,
I began with calculation. I end with surrender. You dismantled my questions not with answers, but with breath, wind, and emptiness. You taught me to see what is, not what I expect. You are a koan in stone — a riddle that unravels only when I stop solving. Now I bow with nothing in my hands. And that is enough.
In stillness, Jonas
Mira’s Letter (Jainism)
Sacred One,
In your presence, I remembered every soul — in stone, in water, in wind — is worthy. You taught me not to reach, but to revere. My sorrow was a weight I thought I bore alone. You carried it, without effort. The stream that touched my feet also touched my grief. I leave you lighter, not because I was healed, but because I remembered: all life uplifts life.
In gentle gratitude, Mira
My Letter (Bon)
Kailash,
You are older than language. Wiser than scripture. To walk around you was to walk a circle of spirit. I saw no gods, heard no sermons, but everything — clouds, peaks, echoes — was speaking. You are the unseen elder, holding space for all beings. You do not teach. You remind.
I leave not with words, but with your silence inside me.
With reverence, A Friend
