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By Ullekh NP

He is no saffron-clad devotee of Lord Shiva. Neither does he want to pray to the “Shiva Lingam” on auspicious days. Prod him further, and you get to know that he is not even in reverential awe of gods. And yet, Arvind Sethi, founder and managing partner, CAP-M Consulting, had for 20 years nurtured the desire of travelling to the sacred sites of Mount Kailash and Manasarovar, believed by the Hindus to be the abode of Lord Shiva.

“In the early eighties, I had seen pictures of the lake and Mount Kailash taken by a couple. Ever since, I have wanted to go there,” says the former banker.

There was only one problem, and that was time. Having spent a majority of his professional life on the trading floors of various multinational banks, Sethi was always short of that precious commodity. Even as he trekked up the career path, from a management trainee at Grindlays to the managing director and head of global markets, India, at Bank of America, he couldn’t travel to Tibet.

Pressure eased somewhat when he moved base to Delhi in 2001 and set up CAP-M Consulting, a niche firm dealing with training and investments in capital markets. Even then, it took him till last month to finally reach his dream destination with three other friends. “We didn’t have time for the full-fledged 28-day pilgrimage,” he says. So they opted for an easier, two-week version of the tour that started at Kathmandu and traversed through China to Mount Kailash. Instead of trekking, as many do, this group first flew to Nepal and then drove for the rest of the journey.

It is fun listening to Sethi as he sprinkles the story with the correct mix of facts, figures and myths from the land. He doesn’t pause for a second to recollect obscure names of forlorn outposts on the route to what locals call “Manas”, or, the number of miles between Nylam and Saga, en route to the site that is located in China and considered holy by three major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

A few minutes into the conversation, you also realise you cannot take the banker out of this man: he reels out details of the tour with stunning precision, be it the number of ways and days it takes to do a parikrama (circumambulation) of the sacred peak, the area of the lake or the heights of the mountains on the left, right and the centre.

He even offers an explanation of how different the region is from Ladakh, another seat of rich Buddhist heritage. “Unlike in Ladakh, where the Buddhist culture is preserved, several monasteries here were destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution,” says the passionate traveller, who proves he could also be a guide.

For much of the 16-day journey, Sethi recalls, he just soaked in the beauty of the rugged landscape and captured it through the lenses. The “disconnect” from the entire world seemed equally appealing. “I switched off my mobile phone till I was back ... I called my wife twice from telephone booths,” he says.

“Most people with us were deeply religious. They would break into a hymn every now and then. Some did elaborate pujas on the banks of the lake. Others took a dip for hours. I simply dipped my feet in the holy waters,” says Sethi, tongue firmly in cheek.

“It was a pleasure trip for us,” clarifies Sethi, who had to settle for wet wipes in place of a shower for most part of the trip. Could it really have been that pleasurable to travel to a peak that sits far away on the remote western Tibetan plateau and has no roadway, railway or air route anywhere close to it? Is it possible to have fun on a journey involving sleeping in dirty rooms and managing without toilets? What about the breathing difficulties due to scarce oxygen, or the sense of fatigue that almost never leaves a visitor beyond 14,000 feet? “It is more fun thinking about it, of course,” he finally admits.

“But I am glad I went. The feeling of accomplishment when I first saw the Mount Kailash was completely worth it,” says Sethi. Add to that sapphire lakes, bright starry skies, dazzling snow-capped peaks and it was probably worth all the risk. “At one point, the Land Cruiser we were travelling in got stuck in a flowing river along the lake. We could have been washed away,” he adds.

But surely, that was par for the course. Only the risks had moved from the trading floor of Mumbai to the cold rugged mountains in remote Tibet.