How historian Alex McKay spent decades studying the spiritual and scientific truths behind Mount Kailash

Somewhere during these journeys through India, McKay got an idea of what Tibet was like—until then he had only known it through books. He met Tibetan pilgrims in McLeod Ganj, Himachal Pradesh, who had covered long distances to seek the Dalai Lama’s blessings. And Hindu ascetics who sought divinity while wandering the majestic high mountains and worshipped deities that lived on holy Himalayan peaks such as Mount Kailash (in Tibet), the abode of Lord Shiva.

The land and its stories fascinated McKay. But Tibet was still off limits for foreigners since the Chinese invasion of 1959. It remained forbidden fruit, tucked away at the back of his mind for years. He finally sneaked across the border in 1984. Though he had a permit to fly into Lhasa, he instead chose to take the land route, getting past multiple checkpoints to get there and also made a pilgrimage to Kailash. He realised he wanted to learn more.

The oil rig worker, who had settled into the life of a private detective based in Australia by then, decided to don the hat of an academician, teaching South Asian history in London, and Leiden in the Netherlands before retiring in 2006. The initial fascination of Tibet led to a deep study in order to grasp the significance and sacredness of Kailash in different cultures.

It helped him arrive at his own understanding of Kailash—both the physical behemoth as well as the spiritual idea of this mountain. A modern narrative based on the divine that continues to lure thousands of pilgrims each year, besides travellers like him. McKay, 70, relives those eventful years in the book, In Search of Mount Kailash: Travels in the Sacred Himalaya, which won the Kekoo Naoroji Book Award at The Himalayan Club’s annual festival earlier this year.

McKay spoke to Lounge about his incredible exploration and discoveries. Edited excerpts from the interview.

When was the first time you heard of Mount Kailash?

Around 1980, I picked up Charles Allen’s book, A Mountain in Tibet, which told of the different ideas of the mountain held by westerners and Indians, though not so much the Tibetans. The traditional Indian ideas sounded fascinating and when it became possible for westerners to travel there, I wanted to see it for myself.

Tell us about your first journey to Tibet in 1984.

It was hard travelling through wild country by truck and local bus, and staying in rough hotels en route. Eastern Tibet was rugged, mountain country and much of it was covered in forest. It was very different from the landscape described by most travellers who went through the dry, flat and dusty landscape of central Tibet. Until we were nearly in Lhasa, my travelling companion and I were constantly concerned that the Chinese would stop us and send us back. In fact, the Chinese presence then was not as overwhelming as it has become since. We did find the Tibetans much less accessible than the locals in India—largely a language issue, but also because they were simply not used to westerners since the 1940s.

What convinced you to become a student in your 30s and pursue a degree in religious studies and history at the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London?

I wanted to know more about Tibet and felt that my reading wasn’t enough. I needed to go deeper and I had no particular goal in life before that, so I could sense academics to be my path. I was influenced by the difference between direct experience and institutional learning. And at 30, it seemed like a logical progression to change from one path to the next. Sleeping under a bridge in the middle of nowhere is a learning experience when you are a teenager, but at a later age, it’s a kind of social failure. Your body can’t deal with it either, although it’s nice to know you can still do it when you need to!

How has the idea of Kailash influenced Indian and Tibetan cultures?

The two are very separate. Kailash is not the supreme mountain in Tibetan understanding but part of a wider sacred landscape. For Shaivites, where Shiva lives is the centre and the supreme place, whereas Tibetans have many such centres. The influence is certainly stronger in Indian culture, since the Himalaya is believed to be the home of the Gods. Tibetans don’t have that concept. The deity who resides at Kailash is Demchok—known as Chakrasamvara in Sanskrit—the patron deity of the Kargyu sect. If there are links between them (Indian and Tibetan deities), they predate Buddhism and even classical Hinduism, and could be found in the Naga deities that reside in lakes on both sides of the border—there is certainly that older strand of belief in the western Himalaya.

How was it to analyse religious texts, myths and legends around Kailash and interpret them as an academician?

That was fundamental to my findings—the realisation that the various Puranas promote different places as the sacred centre, and that the Manasakhanda, which promotes Kailash, is a recent text attached to the Skanda Purana and not ancient at all. Then, when you closely study the older references to Kailash in the Mahabharata and Ramayana, you realise they best describe a journey to the Ganges source and/or to Sri Kailash, a mountain near the source—and not the Kailash in Tibet. Through my PhD on the British in Tibet 1904-47 and their role in shaping modern Hinduism, I realised that an early 20th century book written by Charles Sherring, the district commissioner of Almora, was fundamental to the modern Indian understanding of Kailash. And that he was no scholar but actually wrote it to promote pilgrimage in his district.

What emotions did you experience when years of enquiry led to these revelations about Kailash?

I am largely a source-based historian with my own experience of Indian and Tibetan culture, especially the religious aspect, which is a strong influence that secular western historians tend to ignore. I had spent so much time in India, not least among the Giri sannyasis who hold Kailash supreme. But I had to reconcile my experiences and my academic findings and position. I did not want to say or believe, “Oh, the Hindus are wrong. They are going to the wrong mountain”. That would be simplistic and entirely superficial, since the answers were obviously more complex. And I found them really in the lives and writings of the highly intelligent lineage of upper Himalayan swamis. In Swami Tapovan’s writings, I found the answer—that there is a divide between the spiritual and scientific and their truths, and that it is pointless to dwell too much upon it. They are two sides of the same coin, the two truths can co-exist, and that what matters to the spiritually inclined is faith and practice. History is interesting and sometimes important, but it is not intended to produce spiritual illumination or moksha. So I was personally satisfied by that conclusion and certainly hope that my conclusions are accepted in that context. The Kailash of the Mahabharata and Ramayana is probably Sri Kailash (or possibly another mountain in the vicinity such as Shivling) but modern Hindu pilgrims share an authentic spiritual quest in the modern Kailash yatra.