Trekking Mount Kailash

Mount Kailash is located 1,400 km almost directly west of Lhasa city (about 20-30km directly north of the western India/Nepal border) in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. So this three-day trek is, inevitably, part of a much longer 15-17 day journey that includes three days of acclimatization in Lhasa and lots of car time (expect to be in the car for four days at 6-8 hours per day before you even reach the base of Mount Kailash). So there is lots of driving through beautiful, stark high altitude environments before you attempt trekking (and sleeping at) at 5,000 meters. This provides for plenty of great photos ops of alpine lakes and glaciers and allows sufficient time for acclimatization before you trek across the high pass of Mount Kailash, Dolma La at 5,636 meters.

A typical full itinerary might look like this:

Lhasa–> Shigatse –> Lhatse–> Saga –> Mount Kailash –> Manasarovar Lake –> Guge Kingdom–> Manasarovar Lake –> Saga –>Everest Base Camp –> Lhasa

Here is a brief overview of the entire trip to give you a better idea of the bigger picture of the trip I took in May 2018 (although you could certainly cut out the Guge Kingdom and shave two days off your total trip):

Day 1: Arrival in Lhasa, Elevation: 3600 meters

Day 2: Lhasa guided tour, See the Potala Palace and the Jokhang Temple

Day 3: Lhasa guided tour, Sera Monastery debates

There is a dirt road that parallels the kora for the first 20 km on day one and the last 10 km on day three of the trek. If something were to go wrong you could use this road for an emergency to get out, but medical care is elementary in Darchen – there is is only a small clinic here. If you do decide to turn around or need a sudden evacuation you can expect to pay a premium to travel this gravel road back to Darchen town; fees to ride in a truck along this road can range from 500 to 2000 RMB to get a lift up or down the trail for a few kilometres.

The closest medium-sized hospital from Darchen would be in Shigatse- this is 670km from Kailash. So advanced medical care is at least 14 hours away. So as you are on Kailash be mindful of the altitude and take things slow.

The first day of the trek will take us 20 kilometres from Darchen town around Mt. Kailash to Dira Puk Monastery (aka Drirapuk Gompa). The total elevation gain over this 20 km is 433 meters, so the trail is relatively flat for most of the day. But hiking this first day is still a lot of work as you are walking a long distance at altitude.

Today you will follow this ancient pilgrimage route with Tibetan Buddhist and Indian Hindu pilgrims. You will stay in a small guesthouse near the Dira Puk Monastery. The elevation of Dira Puk Monastery is 5080 meters.

7:30am-Depart Darchen Hotel at 4,647 meters

Eat simple breakfast in Darchen town

(Boiled eggs rice porridge, simple bread)

8:00 am- Start Walking from Darchen town

The first 5 km of the trail is a very gradual uphill.

Here you gain 100 meters as you approach the first set of prayer flags

From the first set of prayer flags, then the next 1-2 km of the trail gradually drops down and lose 100 vertical meters.

10:00 am- Arrive at first view of Kailash, with prayer flags

Watch pilgrims prostrate around Kailash

Many of these Tibetan pilgrims do this 52 km kora in one day, leaving at 4 am and returning to Darchen town at 8:00 pm

Here at this first rest point, you will see pilgrims prostrating around the holy mountain. Young pilgrims will carry the clothes and goods for the elderly to a certain point and then go back and prostrate the trail themselves again. In this way, they are doing the entire pilgrimage circuit 3 times.

For a young, healthy Tibetan, prostrating every two steps takes about 16 days to get around the whole mountain kora (this is a minimum for younger ones- older folks take longer.) Although there are about eight simple teahouses on the trek that provide food and lodging, there are not enough Guesthouses for 16 days of total travel since the usual trek takes two nights/ three days. So pilgrims who are prostrating the entire trek often sleep on the ground in warm blankets and sheep fur-lined robes along the trail.

11:00 am – Arrive at Serdshong Check Point (this is 7km from Darchen town). The government may check your official Tibet permits here. From this point walk another 2.6km to the first teahouse.

12:15 pm- Arrive at the first teahouse by the bridge at 4,747 meters in altitude.

This is about the halfway point to the teahouse where we will sleep this first night. To the teahouse, the bridge is 9.6km from Darchen town, and it is another 11km to our sleeping destination at Dira Puk Monastery through the Lha-Chu valley.

At this first teahouse, the food offerings are very scarce. You can buy a bowl of instant noodles for 10 RMB, refill your bottle with hot water for 8 RMB, or a coke or a soft drink for 6 RMB. As you get further from civilization into the trek, these prices will go up slightly at each successive teahouse.

1:00 pm- Depart the first teahouse after lunch

From the first teahouse walk 6.8 km to the second teahouse

This is a 1.5-hour walk

From the second teahouse walk 4.2 km to the third teahouse at Dira Puk Monastery.

This is a 2-hour walk. As you approach a large bridge with prayer flags on it, you will need to ask your guide where your guesthouse is in relation to this bridge. This bridge leads to the actual Dira Puk Monastery which you can see in the distance. This is the old sight for simple guesthouses (and some groups still stay here). Our particular accommodation was in in a corrugated tin building with an all dirt floor that lay on the main trail right under the shadow of Kailash (so we stayed straight on the path and did NOT cross left to the Dira Puk Monastery). As with most things in western China, there was construction here, and this area was developing rapidly, even for being so remote. When we were there at the teahouse, we saw several workers building a large 2-story concrete guesthouse which dwarfed the corrugated tin shacks and canvas tents where we were staying in size.

4:30 pm – Arrive at the third teahouse at 5,080 meters where we will be sleeping the first night.

Note on sleeping:

Sleeping at 5,080 meters is almost as high as sleeping at Mount Everest base camp on the Tibet side. Even though your body will feel very tired, this will probably not be a great night of sleep for you because sleeping at altitude in such sheltered, but primitive conditions will likely not yield a full 8 hours of rest. The simple guesthouse did provide plenty of blankets and cooked us a simple meal of hot rice and boiled egg and tomatoes.

Overall the walk on the first day is 20km and involves about 6-7 total hours of walking time (not including lunch and rest time)

Along the way, there are two tents (teahouses) with hot water and instant noodles and these are beautiful places to stop to rest, refill, and get out of the bright sun and blowing winds.

The second day of our trek around Kailash will take us up and over the Dolma La Pass, the highest pass on the circuit at 5,636 meters. Although this is undoubtedly the hardest day of the 3-day trek, high mountain and glacier views will follow you for most of the day. From the Dolma La Pass, you will descend to Zutul Puk Monastery (aka Dzutrulpuk Gompa on the second map), elevation 4,820 meters. The total trekking distance this day is 22 kilometres

This day you will walk 22 km total – up and down the high pass.

The total altitude gain is 556 meters up, and then you will descend to 4,817 meters at the Zutul Puk Monastery. So the second night of sleeping is about 200 meters lower than the first night’s camp (this is good news!). There are at least two teahouses where it is possible to sleep after descending Dolma La but both of these are more primitive than the one at Zutul Puk Monastery and, in the case of the first one you reach after the pass, is much higher in altitude. The first teahouse you come to after the Dolma La pass is at 5,236 meters (17,180 feet) – this one is about 4km after the Dolma La Pass. The second teahouse (which is only a 30-minute walk from the Zutul Puk Monastery teahouse) you come to after the Dolma La pass is at 4,807 meters (15,771 feet). If you were having a hard time, it would be possible to stop and sleep at either of these teahouses after Dolma La pass. But because the Zutul Puk Monastery teahouse has real hot food (and not just instant noodles) and was much more protected from the elements and felt a lot closier, we were glad we pressed onto to the Zutul Puk Monastery teahouse even though it meant a longer day.

7:00 am- Wake up at 5,080 meters in Teahouse near Dira Puk Monastery. Eat a simple breakfast of Tsampa or noodles in the teahouse.

You are going to want to have an early start because it is a long day and the snow and the wind come in often in the afternoon, while the mornings generally have a better chance of giving clearer weather that is more comfortable for trekking.

7:30 am – Depart teahouse

It is 8 km to the high Dolma La pass at 5,636 m

The road continues to be flattish with a slight incline for the first 4km of your day.

10:00 am- Arrive at the last tea house before the Dolma La pass.

This is about halfway to the pass. Make sure you get lots of rest and plenty of snacks here. As the next 4km up to the pass is going to be the most challenging section of your whole trek, not only because you will be at the highest altitude of the entire trek but also because the last 1 hour of the trek up to the pass is the steepest trail you will encounter on the trek.

This is the last place for water and snacks for another 13 km, so make sure you fill up your water bottles with hot water. You are going to need a lot of water to fight those high altitude headaches on the pass!

10:15 am- Depart for high pass

The trail from the last teahouse before the pass starts out as relatively flat. Then you make a right turn at a gully, and you start to go up dramatically.

About 30 minutes before the actual pass, there is a false summit of prayer flags as you go under a bunch of flags and ascend to the ridgeline. I made a big push for the top thinking I only had 1 minute left to the actual pass and ended up wasting a lot of energy because I was still another 30 minutes from the real Dolma La Pass.

Do not make the mistake I made! When you get to this first cluster of prayer flags (that are like a little colorful cave you have to walk through and duck under), know that you are roughly at the halfway point between the sharp turn up the gully and the top of the pass.

The Dolma La pass had about 1 meter of snow on the top, but there was no need for crampons, Yak Trax, or boots. The snow here was consistently between 30-100 cm thick but was all trampled down by the 1000’s pilgrims who had all walked the same path in the previous weeks. I did not posthole even once in the hard-packed snow up at the top of the pass.

12:30pm- Arrive Dolma La High Pass at 5,636 meters/ 18,500 feet. Spend a few minutes celebrating and taking pictures but do not stay too long up here! Your body will definitely be wanting to descend as quickly as possible at every step down will give you that much more available oxygen!

1:00pm- Descend
The first hour of the descent from the pass is relatively steep.
The descent is often on slippery snow, and you will need to watch out for pilgrims prostrating face-first down the hill. I had to step around a few pilgrims as they prostrated down the hill and it made for tricky footing on the narrow, icy trail.
You will probably want trekking poles as this is steeper than the ascent to the pass and some of the melting ice can be slippery.

2:00 pm- Cross Ice river

After one hour of navigating slippery switchbacks, you finally level out more on a usual evenly- graded trail. However, you have one more small obstacle before you are Scott free. At the bottom of the switchbacks, you have to cross a frozen river (or lake?) The body of water is frozen with several meters of ice, and so it will certainly hold your weight as you walk across its 50-meter long ice sheet. But do be cautious here with your footing as walking on solid ice can certainly result in a pretty big fall on your butt or your side. With a backpack, this ice crossing is a little unwieldy but doable if you take it slow.

I was pretty tentative crossing the ice as I was not sure, at first, if the ice sheet would hold me. My body weighed 90 kilograms, and I had two backpacks (one on the back and my friends strapped to the front), and I was afraid if I fell in I could not get my hands free from the tangle of straps on the backpacks. But after a few steps out on the ice, I saw I could trust the ice to hold my bodyweight just as it had done 1000’s of pilgrims who walked before me on this same path.

From here on out, most of the trail is smooth sailing, and you can make a good time as you descend to a lower, more comfortable altitude.

3:00 pm- Arrive at first Teahouse after the Dolma La Pass

We had a late lunch here at 5,236 meters (17,130 feet). It was a beautiful place to wind down from the intensity of the snow and the altitude up on the pass, and I laid down here for a few minutes. As I closed my eyes, I could feel the swirl of light from the bright snow stimulating my eyes behind my closed eyelids. I was very thankful I had good polarized sunglasses because I could only imagine how overstimulated my eyes would have been in the 360 degrees of bright snow without eye protection.

This teahouse is pretty simple and only offers instant noodles and soda. While that was not precisely checking the list for all my hunger cravings, it made for a refreshing stop.

From this teahouse, the trail becomes a dirt road that a car could drive on and all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other and make a good time as you hike another flat 10km slightly downhill to your sleeping destination.

6:30 pm- Arrive at Zutul Puk Monastery

Get settled and sleep at Zutul Puk Monastery. This guesthouse offers a nice stone block guesthouse with cosy rooms. Our rooms did not have any heating but putting six people into a small room was more than enough (that combined with the ample thick blankets available) to keep us cosy throughout the night.

The guesthouse has a simple stone building with squat toilets outside and offers a little restaurant where you can eat simple bread, and homemade Tibetan fried noodles, french fries, and Tsampa.