Travelling to Muktinath, the Mecca of Tibetan Buddhists

A burning desire to see the eternal flame of Muktinath
John Flinn
1037 words
16 September 2007
The San Francisco Chronicle
FINAL
G.3
English
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc., Hearst Newspapers Division. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.

We're all pilgrims of a sort, and my own pilgrimage had pretty much been a disaster. I'd journeyed halfway around the world to climb a charismatic, pyramid-shaped Himalayan peak called Chulu, covering the last 100 miles on foot, and I'd failed badly.

Long, blistery days on the trail, suspect food, sweaty days down low, shivering nights up high, altitude sickness, that charming little malady called Delhi Belly, a year of planning, thousands of dollars spent, six weeks of vacation burned, and I'd barely made it halfway up the mountain.

It's not the destination that matters, say the enlightened folks, it's the journey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I really wanted to reach the damn summit.

Now, as I limped on painful knees down from the 17,769-foot-high pass known as the Thorong La, one thing kept me going: the eternal flame of Muktinath.

Ever since I read about it as a schoolboy in one of those books of marvels, long before I'd ever heard of the Himalayas or knew what a Hindu or a Buddhist was, I'd been obsessed by the tale. It is said that the Hindu god Brahma lit the flame, and it has been burning ever since, with no intervention by humans - no oil, no wick, no flicked Bics.

In general, I'll admit, I've never had much of an appetite for mythology.Tales of defeated demons transforming into waterfalls, or demigods pulling islands out of the sea with fishhooks, or ravens playing practical jokes on coyotes make my eyes glaze over.

But the eternal flame of Muktinath is quite another thing: It's been burning in a little Himalayan grotto for more than 2,000 years, and you can see it with your own eyes.

By good fortune, my journey home from the mountain followed the Annapurna Circuit trekking route and took me through the village of Muktinath. (This story took place more than a decade ago, but nothing has changed there.)

Perched at an altitude of 12,300 feet, Muktinath commands one of the most dramatic locations on the planet. It stands above the Kali Gandaki River, which slices all the way through the mightiest mountain range of them all, with the 26,000-foot peaks of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri standing sentinel on either side.It's considered by some geographers to be the deepest gorge in the world.

In the river bed you can find black rocks that when cracked open reveal the spiral fossils of ammonites, deposited here 130 million years ago when the entire region was a sea bed. Hindus believe these fossils are a manifestation of their god Vishnu.

The trail to the village was crowded with pilgrims, both Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists. "Muktinath," wrote Nepalese author Hari Bansh Jha, "is to Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists what Mecca is to Muslims and Jerusalem is to Christians."

To Hindus, it is sacred as a place of salvation; to wash in the waters here guarantees deliverance after death. To Buddhists it is a place where the great sage Guru Rinpoche stopped while on his journey to Tibet, leaving a footprint in the rock. They also consider it one of the world's 24 tantric places and home to the goddesses known as dakinis, or sky dancers. Both religions make much of the fact that all the elements are present in Muktinath - earth, air, holy water and fire.

Trudging up the trail from Jomsom were Buddhist monks in burgundy robes; Hindu holy men with ash-smeared faces who'd walked all the way from New Delhi in sandals; and well-to-do Indian pilgrims slumped over ponies, looking rather queasy with altitude sickness. One trekking company even offers a pilgrimage-hike called "Muktinath and the Himalayan Flame of Faith," which sounds like a Harry Potter spin-off.

It's not just the eternal flame that they come for. There are important temples, both Hindu and Buddhist; 108 spouts with heads like either dragons or bulls, depending on who's describing them, spitting out sacred water; and at an altitude that's far above the normal timberline, a wondrous abundance of trees.

As I neared the village I was overwhelmed by the cloying bouquet of incense. It was literally the first thing I'd smelled after spending the previous week in the scentless world of ice and stone.

Other pilgrims were marveling at the temples, statues and artwork, but they didn't much interest me. I was impatient to see the eternal flame. I found my way to the pagoda-style temple dedicated to Jwala Mayi, the goddess of fire. At the entrance I was greeted by a Tibetan Buddhist nun who served as a caretaker.She was wearing a dark purple robe and a Marlboro Racing Team hat.

She led me into the darkened temple and over to a collection box into which I stuffed a fistful of rupees. At last it was time for the moment I'd been anticipating since childhood - I was finally going to set eyes on the eternal flame of Muktinath.

The nun took my hand and led me back into a little grotto with a curtain at the back. It was cold and dank in there; I'd expected to feel the warmth of the fire.

With considerable flourish she pulled back the curtain and gestured for me to kneel down and peer into a little recess. And there burned the eternal flame of Muktinath - a pitifully tiny nub of blue flame that looked exactly like the pilot light on my stove at home.

"That's it?" I asked.

She nodded yes. Apparently Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims are moved to tears by the site, but I gather a lot of Westerners react as I did.

I left the temple, blinking in the bright sunlight, and realized I had come an awful long way to learn one of the essential lessons of travel: It really is the journey that matters, not the destination.