Having arrived at Manas Lake, under the great snow dome of the mountain Kailash, she took deep draughts from the clear, sweet water. She was tired by the chase given by the herd of kiang, wild asses, which had begun right from the time she had left Nepal at Hilsa. (Understandably, the kiang had felt the need to challenge this odd species that had invaded their habitat.) Suntali went down on all fours and rested by a set of thorn bushes, which kept the cold, biting wind at bay. She thought briefly of the baby she had left behind in the sub-tropical Nepal. But there was no sense worrying – the calf was well cared for, surely, by his extended family of aunts and uncles. No time to worry, for she was the Jogging Buffaloe, her interest and desire just to run, run, run!
Suntali would have liked to do the kora, circling Kailash like the human pilgrims who were milling about her on the lakeside. One such traveller came by and touched Suntali on her back, not quite believing the sight of the hairless, dark-skinned beast here by the banks of Manasarovar. "I am a zoologist from Bengaluru, Dr Venkatesh," said the man. "And I should know that you, lady water buffaloe, are an aberration in these surroundings. You are far, far from your traditional habitat, by altitude, vegetation, geology and climate." Prabhavati, the doctor's spouse, came up and said, "Oh, but doctor, have you not heard of climate change? This is the shape of things to come – before long, yaks will be swimming in the Kaveri!"
Suntali would indeed have liked to do the kora, but she knew that her broad bovine hoofs were not meant for that high trail of rock and ice. Besides, she was sure to suffer from altitude sickness. Buffaloes were meant to wallow in waterholes, move among the paddies, mostly stepping on mud rather than hard, rocky ground. Their lungs are evolved for lower altitudes. Suntali had been audacious even to have come this far, but certainly she did not have a death wish. She was certainly adventurous, of course, and there was nothing she had liked better than lumbering along the Tibetan flats, letting her imagination run wild amidst the constantly changing scenery. In particular, she had liked watching the shapes of mountains transform as she progressed. With Kailash, she would be missing this, having decided to forego the circumambulation.
She was an atheist buffaloe, of course, and so would not have done the kora because of religious belief. She would nevertheless have liked to have done the parikrama because … why, after all? "Because it is there"? No matter that George Leigh Mallory had used that same enigmatic sentence when asked why he was seeking to climb Mount Chomolongma, back in 1924 or so. There is no reason why such a good rationale should be monopolised by a single long-dead mountaineer, thought Suntali, as if no one thereafter could have the opinion expressed in the same word sequence! How absurd.