Valandre Blog

Mount Kailash

August 18th, 2012

Mount Kailash is a 6,638 m (21,778 ft) peak situated in today’s Tibet. It raises up into the sky, in the center area of the source of Asia’s  3 major rivers: Indus river, Brahmanputra river and the Ganges river.
“All mountains are sacred”… quote Mrs Oh Eun Sun, disputed first woman on the 14 8000, the Kailash is by far the most sacred mountain in Asia, to Hindus it’s considered to be the eternal home to the Lord Shiva, and Tantric Buddhist believe that Mount Kailash is the home to the Buddah Demchok.

Every year, thousands make a pilgrimage to Kailash, following a tradition going back thousands of years. Pilgrims of several religions believe that circumambulating Mount Kailash on foot is a holy ritual that will bring good fortune. The peregrination is made in a clockwise direction by Hindus and Buddhists. Followers of the Jain and Bönpo religions circumambulate the mountain in a counterclockwise direction. The path around Mount Kailash is 52 km (32 mi) long.

Climbing the Kailash is not advisable, and it has never been done, as it’s told that it will put a curse upon the climbers, who will start to grow old very fast. Prospected in 1926 by Hugh Ruttledge and later by Herbert Tichy  who was in the area in 1936, attempting to climb Gurla Mandhata. When he asked one of the Garpons of Ngari whether Kailash was climbable, the Garpon replied, “Only a man entirely free of sin could climb Kailas. And he wouldn’t have to actually scale the sheer walls of ice to do it – he’d just turn himself into a bird and fly to the summit.”

 Reinhold Messner was given the opportunity by the Chinese government to climb the mountain in the 1980s but he declined. In 2001 the Chinese gave permission for a Spanish team led by Jesus Martinez Novas to climb the peak, but in the face of international disapproval the Chinese decided to ban all attempts to climb the mountain. Messner, referring to the Spanish plans, said, “If we conquer this mountain, then we conquer something in people’s souls … I would suggest they go and climb something a little harder. Kailas is not so high and not so hard“

You are right Reinhold….better stay away from this one!

Gerlinde and Ralf – straight from K2 to ‘das aktuelle Sportstudio’

September 5th, 2011

Austrian mountaineer, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, has just become the first woman to climb the world’s 14 highest peaks without the use of supplementary oxygen. She finished this amazing feat with an impressive climb up K2 using a different, and not very often climbed route – the North Pillar. Gerlinde and her husband, Ralf Dujmovits, were climbing with a team of four other mountaineers and during their expedition they had to overcome extreme difficulties. They had to deal with avalanches, rock fall and breaking trail through hip-deep snow at dizzying altitudes above 8,000m. On 23 August at 6.18pm, Gerlinde together with three other climbers, stood on top of the second highest peak in the world and with this achievement, she certainly wrote mountaineering history.

After having been on the mountain for more than two-and-a-half months, the couple arrived in Germany on Saturday, 3rd September and instead of getting a rest at home, Ralf and Gerlinde went straight to ‘das aktuelle Sportstudio’ to share their remarkable experience.