The hardest part of the Kailash circuit is the Drolma La at around 5,630 metres, and the ground immediately before it is the part that carries the meaning. Shiwa Tsal is a wide stony flat treated as a charnel ground, where pilgrims leave something of themselves: a lock of hair, a tooth, a drop of blood, an item of clothing. The crossing is understood as a death and the descent on the far side as a rebirth, so the pass is not simply the physical crux of the walk but the point the walk is about. The ground is littered accordingly, which visitors sometimes mistake for rubbish.
Direction is doctrine here. Hindus, Buddhists and Jains walk clockwise; Bonpos walk counter clockwise, so the two streams pass each other on the same path, and the difference between the traditions is visible on the ground rather than argued in a text.
The most demanding form is the prostration circuit, in which the pilgrim measures the fifty two kilometres with the length of their own body, marking the ground at the fingertips, standing, stepping to the mark and going down again. It takes weeks.
The mountain has never been climbed and there is no record of a permitted attempt. Reinhold Messner is generally reported to have been offered or to have discussed permission and to have declined on the ground that the peak should be left alone, and a later expedition proposal was abandoned after protest. Whatever the details, the practical position is that the summit is not visited.
Access is administered rather than open. Indian pilgrims travel on a government organised route requiring a lottery, a medical examination and a fixed itinerary, and the arrangement has been suspended during periods of border tension.