Three Kinds of Silence on the Kailash Kora
Before you set foot on the path, you hear about the Kailash kora. You hear of its spiritual significance, its physical demands, and its place at the center of the world for Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and Bönpo. But what you don't hear about, what you cannot understand until you are there, is the silence. It is not one silence, but many. On my own pilgrimage, I found three that have stayed with me, shaping my understanding of this land and my own place within it.
The First Silence: The ![]()
Immensity of Nature
The kora begins with an almost overwhelming quiet. The air at 5,000 meters is thin and sharp, and sound travels differently here—or rather, it doesn't travel far. The world seems to shrink to the sound of your own breathing, the crunch of gravel under your boots, and the whisper of the wind sweeping down from the granite faces of the Himalayas. This is the silence of scale. Standing before the majestic, snow-capped peak of Kailash, you are humbled. All the noise of the modern world, the chatter of daily life, the anxieties of the mind—they are all absorbed by the immense, indifferent landscape. It's a silence that doesn't feel empty, but full. It is full of the presence of the mountain, the sky, the earth. It is a powerful reminder of our smallness, and in that smallness, there is a strange and profound peace.
The Second Silence: The Rhythm of Devotion
As you walk, you are rarely alone. You are part of a slow-moving river of humanity. There are elderly women, their faces etched with the lines of a life of hardship and faith, turning prayer wheels with a ceaseless, gentle motion. There are young men prostrating themselves fully, measuring the entire 52-kilometer path with their bodies. There are monks in deep maroon robes, their lips moving in silent mantra. And yet, there is a profound silence among them. It is the quiet of shared purpose. No words are needed. Each person is in their own world of devotion, yet deeply connected to everyone else on the path. It's a silence built from thousands of individual prayers, a collective hum of faith that you feel more than you hear. It taught me that devotion is not always loud; sometimes, its most powerful expression is a quiet, steady, and unwavering step forward.
The Third Silence: The Echo Within
It is within the first two silences that the third is born. When the external world is quieted by nature and the communal mind is focused by devotion, you are left with only yourself. The physical exertion of the trek strips away all pretense. At this altitude, with your lungs burning and muscles aching, you have no energy for anything but the essential. It was here, on the high pass of Drölma La, that I found the deepest silence of all. It was an internal quiet where my own story came into focus. I saw my life in Sydney, my return to Lhasa, my hands learning the ancient craft of my ancestors. I understood that my work with silver and turquoise is my own form of kora. Every strike of the hammer, every polished stone, is a meditation—a way of circling the sacred in my own daily life. This silence was not empty; it was an echo chamber where the whispers of my own soul finally became clear.
The Kailash kora is more than a trek; it's a journey into the heart of silence. It reminds us that in a world saturated with noise, the most important truths are often found when we stop and listen—to the land, to the faith of others, and most importantly, to ourselves. The patterns etched into a silver Ghau box, the deep blue of a turquoise stone—they are not just designs. They are symbols of this sacred silence, a piece of Kailash you can hold in your hand.