Chapter 6 — Silk Road

The kora is a clockwise circumambulatory pilgrimage around Mount Kailash. Middleton travels to Darchen specifically to complete the kora, and the Tibetan doctor at Darchen confirms he will be well enough to do it.

Middleton travels with Tsetan, his Tibetan driver who navigates the mountain passes, and Daniel, who acts as interpreter. At Hor, Daniel finds a truck ride back to Lhasa and the two bid him farewell. Later in Darchen, Middleton meets Norbu, a Tibetan academic from Beijing, who becomes his kora companion.

Lhamo is a woman in Ravu from whom Middleton receives a farewell gift — a long-sleeved sheepskin coat (the kind worn by local drokba men) — as he leaves to head toward Mount Kailash. She had told him through Daniel that he should wear warmer clothes for the journey.

The passes are snow-blocked at over 5,000 metres. At one point a swathe of snow with an icy top layer blocks the track; Tsetan and the others spread handfuls of dirt across the frozen surface to give the tyres grip, then Tsetan drives the car carefully across while the others walk to lighten the load. A second snow patch requires driving around on a steep rocky slope. At 5,400 metres, Middleton's head begins to throb from altitude.

Kyang is the Tibetan word for wild ass — Tsetan points to a distant pall of dust and uses the word before the herd of wild ass comes into view. Drokba refers to the nomadic herders seen tending their flocks on the plateau; Tsetan also calls Middleton 'drokba, sir' when he puts on the sheepskin coat Lhamo gifted him.

The mastiffs are described as shaggy monsters, blacker than the darkest night, wearing bright red collars. They stand guard outside nomads' tents and charge fearlessly at the vehicle, forcing Tsetan to brake and swerve, chasing for about a hundred metres before stopping. The chapter notes they were historically traded along the Silk Road as tribute from Tibet to China's imperial courts.

Lake Manasarovar is described as Tibet's most venerated stretch of water. Ancient Hindu and Buddhist cosmology places it as the source of four great Indian rivers — the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej, and the Brahmaputra — though the text notes only the Sutlej actually flows from the lake; the headwaters of the others rise nearby on the flanks of Mount Kailash. Earlier travellers such as the Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchi (1900) and Swedish explorer Sven Hedin were deeply moved by its sanctity.

Earlier travellers like Ekai Kawaguchi (1900) and Sven Hedin had been so moved by Lake Manasarovar's sanctity that Kawaguchi burst into tears and even the unsentimental Hedin was affected. Middleton finds Hor a grim, miserable place — no vegetation, just dust, rocks, and years of accumulated refuse, with its cafe having broken windows and a filthy table. The contrast between legend and reality is a recurring theme of the travelogue.

At Darchen (4,760 metres) Middleton suffers a cold that his herbal tea had never quite cured, combined with the effects of altitude. He cannot lie down to sleep — his sinuses fill and his chest feels heavy the moment he does — and he stays awake all night, afraid that if he falls asleep he might not wake up.

The doctor — a Tibetan wearing a thick pullover and woolly hat rather than a white coat — diagnoses a cold and the effects of altitude. He prescribes fifteen screws of paper containing Tibetan medicine: a brown powder (tasting like cinnamon) to take with hot water after breakfast, and small spherical brown pellets at lunch and bedtime. After the first full day's course, Middleton sleeps soundly.

Norbu is a Tibetan academic who works at the Institute of Ethnic Literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Middleton meets him in Darchen's only cafe. Norbu has written academic papers about the Kailash kora for years but has never done it himself; he has come to Darchen to walk it. He and Middleton agree to do the kora together, and Norbu's suggestion to hire yaks to carry luggage and his enthusiasm lift the narrator's spirits.

The chapter is titled 'Silk Road' because the narrator's journey follows the ancient trade route across the Tibetan plateau that was once part of the Silk Road network connecting Tibet and China to the rest of Asia. The text explicitly mentions that Tibetan mastiffs were brought along the Silk Road as tribute from Tibet to China's imperial courts, and that the town of Hor sits on the main east-west highway that followed the old trade route from Lhasa to Kashmir. The author also notes that plastic shopping bags — ubiquitous in the Darchen cafe — may now rank as one of China's most successful exports along the Silk Road today.

Yes, the NCERT PDF of Class 11 English Hornbill Chapter 6 'Silk Road' is free to download on CBSE PrepMaster — no sign-up or payment required.