It is not about where but why you travel

Limping To The Centre Of The World: A Journey To Mount Kailas
Timeri N Murari
Penguin
290 pages
Rs350

Pity Timeri Murari the travel companions he’s saddled with. Near the end of his book, done with the trek and parikrama and now just waiting to get back home, he stands outside for a final contemplation of the sacred mountain. When he returns to his room, two fellow travellers poke their heads out of their blankets to ask: “What were you doing out there?” “Just looking at nature,” replies Murari. “But it’s so boring!” one pronounces. Turns out it’s something of a summing up of the book.

There’s Murari, determined to complete this journey for his own reasons, and even though he is by no means spiritual, he is affected by it to a degree greater than he expects. There are his companions, some of them argumentative and petty, unmoved by the majesty of the experience. You wonder why they made the trip at all.

Why does a person trek out to Mt Kailas anyway? Good travel writing must, I imagine, make you want to go to the place. After reading Murari’s account, I don’t find myself itching to go. Yet he does make me ask the ‘why’ question, and that itself is a tribute to his writing. He asks it of himself, and the answering says things about who he is. The way Murari’s self-perception changes — from a rationalist with no use for religion to someone who believes, if not in religion then in the power of that mountain and its effect on him — is the driving force of the narrative.

But isn’t that what spirituality is about? Not chanting and ritual, but thinking of others, and introspection?

The downside to the book is that Murari is a little too prone to long musings about the state of the world and the condition of India, Indians and humanity itself. For example, he begins a three page rumination with “I belonged to the earth too once, emerged from it, evolved from the sea which once covered it ...” and by the end I’m wondering what the rumination is all about, except for making the point that a trip like this puts in mind thoughts like these. Somehow these musings stand apart from the book, from the account of the trek. Couldn’t they have been a tad more seamless?

Now I’m glad for the glimpse into the minds of Indians on a pilgrimage, and for the way Murari tells us what this journey meant to him. Murari has a sharp eye and an open, engaging mind — two excellent items to pack in a travel bag. Yet this book does not do enough justice to them. I was left longing for the layers travel can find and peel away, wishing for his account to send me scrambling to get on the next Mt Kailas trip myself. That doesn’t happen. But even so, I’m glad Murari stopped to look at nature. So what if someone else found it boring.

Dilip D’Souza is a computer scientist turned writer.