Free The Way of Muri by Ilya Boyashov Page B

one foot mechanically in front of the other, screwing up his eyes and licking the road salt from the ends of his moustache.
    Tong Rampa stopped at the Long Chu monastery to call upon his brother, the venerable Togai Lama. After receiving his brother’s blessing and sharing a meal with the young monks, he set out immediately for his ultimate destination – the sacred and mystical Mount Kailash. Tong’s holiday clothes grew shiny with righteous sweat, and every now and then lice fell from his hair, but the pilgrim’s attention was focused on higher things so he rarely stopped to scratch or shake them from the strip of cloth he wore around his head, where they crawled in defiance of gravity.
    Tong Rampa came across a number of women walking alone and heading in the same direction. These women were short and stocky, like Mongolian horses, and wore peaked hats and an abundance of jewellery. Tong overtook them easily. The women jingled their necklaces, chasing away the local evil spirits, while Tong Rampa chased away the sheep that wandered onto the country roads. He preferred the more philosophically inclined yaks and would give them a friendly wave as he walked past, his bowed legs rhythmically tramping over the dry frost-covered soil. At night he slept on the bare earth, which was dotted with tufts of grass as tough as yeti fur, and calmly breathed the rarefied air. Even though his lungs were accustomed to it, this air still felt as sharp as knives. Spiritual air. His country, the ‘roof of the world’, came alive at night – stars of all sizes twinkled in the sky, and rays of light shone from the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, or so the Tibetans believed. Tong Rampa’s journey continued. During Tong’s visit, his brother had told him of secret passages through the valleys and hot springs. Tong had committed his brother’s verbal map to memory, and it may well have saved his life.
    Occasionally he encountered human settlements. The shabby, smoke-blackened tents and the lice-ridden children running impudently after foreigners did not anger Tong Rampa, because he himself, and those who languished here, knew the true value of the great secret hidden in the local mountains.
    ‘Shambhala! Shambhala!’ called the American tourists, sticking their heads out of their off-road vehicles, all baseball caps and video cameras. The foreigners who came to Tibet were essentially all the same. They would never really find what they were looking for. These explorers were amused by Tong Rampa and his funny way of walking. He hurried on, pausing only occasionally to eat a pancake or chew a little dried meat.
    At night Tong Rampa began to feel as though he could hear the sound of a mysterious and unsettling bell chiming over Tibet. At such moments he would whisper his secret mantra, the meaning of which had been lost by his forefathers long ago: ‘
Lakmuri Ton Chon Go
’. He came across salted lakes more frequently now, and even though he was used to it he became aware of the increase in altitude – his nose kept bleeding, and his blocked nostrils made it even harder to breathe. Continually clearing his nose, Tong Rampa crossed the Valley of Fear and the Plateau of Ten Deaths, where he stumbled across the bones of numerous unknown animals. In the salt-saturated Gompa Valley the wind whipped up the dust until it stung his skin, and he slept surrounded by human skulls.
    Eventually Tong Rampa reached the Longma mountain range and the three secret valleys. After successfully navigating his way through them, he arrived at the village of Parayang in February 1993.
    Soon the Tibetan was walking bravely between two lakes. The lake to his left was a frenzy of turbulent waves, with a ferocious wind blowing above it. This was Lake Rakshastal, the demon lake, home to none other than Simbu-Tso himself. By contrast, sacred waters calmly lapped the shores of Lake Manasarovar, the lake to his right. Tong Rampa was so unsettledby the Lake of Death and