Kailash Patel had waited years for this moment. Standing at the edge of the windswept tarmac in Simkot, a remote airport in northwestern Nepal, he looked tired but elated.

“After a long wait, I finally got to visit Kailash Manasarovar,” said Patel, a resident of Ghatkopar, a suburb in eastern Mumbai. “It was my life’s dream to visit the revered site once, and it came true.”

For Indian pilgrims like Patel, the Kailash Manasarovar yatra is not just a physical journey through some of the harshest terrain on earth—it’s a spiritual odyssey. Revered in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, Mount Kailash is the mythical abode of Lord Shiva. Pilgrims believe that completing the kora—a sacred 52-kilometre circuit around the mountain—can cleanse a lifetime’s sins.

The pilgrimage has resumed after a five-year pause, triggered first by Covid closures and then by geopolitical tensions. Following diplomatic talks in Beijing this January between Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong and Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, the two sides agreed to allow Indian nationals to travel to Tibet’s sacred pilgrimage site.

Beijing officially opened the doors in June, and within weeks, thousands of Indian pilgrims began arriving in Nepal. By the end of last week, over 1,200 Indian pilgrims—622 women and 649 men—had crossed the Hilsa border into China, according to Humla district polic

https://kathmandupost.com/money/2025/07/14/kailash-pilgrims-breathe-new-life-into-nepal-s-mountain-economy