The trail of devastation left behind in the riverside town of Betrawati in Nepal. Betrawati is also on the main route used by pilgrims travelling to Gosaikunda, a pilgrimage site in Rasuwa. (Express photo by Tashi Tobgyal)
Written by: Sadhguru
5 min readSep 10, 2026 06:20 AM IST
First published on: Sep 10, 2026 at 06:20 AM IST
When I went to Kailash for the first time in 2006, I went with 168 people from many nations. The conditions were very harsh at that time. We lived in small tents all along the way. There was not a single bathroom anywhere. There were no roads. We were finding our way through the desert. Normally, groups travelling to Kailash are never more than 40 to 45 people. Even for such groups, a minimum of one to two body bags would come back by the end of the trek.
A local Sherpa group was conducting our affairs for us in Tibet. They were joking among themselves, “How many body bags will this group come back with?” So, I took a vow that no matter what, we were not going to bring back anyone in a bag. And we brought in an extraordinary sense of discipline, focus and training into our teams so that our medical teams, cooking teams and volunteer teams functioned with military precision.