Wind From Mount Kailash

Ветер с Кайласа

Anna Zworykina

Unsurprisingly, this smells cold. I mean, juniper, white sage, wormwood, and incense? That was expected. I like how herbal, bitter, and so overly resinous it is. The resins are so strong and viscous, I feel entrapped by them. This smells less like a perfume but more like a ritualistic ointment to commune with the gods. Probably, that was the intention, judging by the name.

I am at base camp at about 4500 meters. The diffusely green fabric of my tent is leaky, I have sat outside and am feeding on light. One hundred and eight times one is supposed to circle Mount Kailash to reach enlightenment. In the year of the horse, each round counts sixfold. We have rat. So it doesn't help.
The Tibetan plateau is barren. Over all the gravel shimmers an olive-green ocean of withered flora. The wind carries the wormwood from the mountain range, ethereally brushing sage from the steppe, telling elemically of citrus forests, soon glowing lavender. Like prayer flags, they flutter green, purple, yellow, on a string at my tent. They tumble suddenly, mix together, at the mountain of Buddha, how healthy it smells here.
From India, clouds of incense billow, hesperidic and bright. The weather is probably getting spicier now. Warmer, likely too. The Tibetans carry dry oregano on reddish glowing guajak litters across the plain, the wind swirls it into my face, I can't see Kailash for the green spice. It sends me its healthy balm. It yins and yangs before my nose. Sage entwines itself in the dense thorns, taming the threatening Orekan. Then the scent colors shimmer like confetti, the herbs spin in a kaleidoscope, forming a colorful picture of nuances, ethereally sharp, warm, green and further still, resin beside musk roses, citroponax beside light woods. They are all enlightened. Sage and oregano perhaps a little more. But they swim away so beautifully and slowly, in the holy resin of the Brahmaputra, the bright woods of the Indus, and the herbs of the boundless Ganges.
It is quiet up here. The wind blows close to my skin. For hours I gaze at Buddha's mountain, then I set off. One hundred and eight times. It doesn't help.

(With thanks to PallasCC and Caligari)