The High-Altitude Highway: Tales From Ancient Himalayan Trails

Buddhist pilgrims and teachers took the rugged topography in their stride, negating the idea that the Himalayas are a barrier

- Amish Raj Mulmi

For nine days and nine nights the snow fell," the 11th-century Tibetan siddha Milarepa wrote on his way to Kailash-Mansarovar. The snowflakes were as big as a "flock of wool," floating like birds in the sky. Animals could find no food on the snow-clad slopes of the Himalayas, and even "the jaws of beasts of prey were stiffened together" in the snowstorm. "In such fearsome circumstances this strange fate befell me, Milarepa. There were these three: the snowstorm driving down from on high, the icy blast of mid-winter, and the cotton cloth which the sage Mila wore."

Travelers to Kailash today do not need to face such extreme conditions, but for most of history, those who left their homes for pilgrimage or trade in the Himalayas had a prayer sung in their names, a ritual conducted to protect them, or an amulet gifted to save them from the perils of the journey. Before combustion became the "hidden principle behind every artifact that we create" as W.G. Sebald wrote in The Rings of Saturn, the pedestrian method was the primary mode of travel, unless one were wealthy enough to be carried either by animals or humans. In the Himalayas, pilgrimage and trade transcended geographies and borders, as did the quest for knowledge.