JOURNEY TO THE PAST

Photographer MILAN MOUDGILL’S images of Kailash Manasarovar retrace the steps of two explorers who travelled to the sacred region in Tibet to understand how it acquired its geographical narrative.

- MILAN MOUDGILL

THE TIBET OF OLDEN TIMES WAS ALWAYS off limits. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, its geography was only imagined through the accounts of a handful of travellers who had managed to penetrate the few, zealously guarded, passes that provided access to this forbidden land. This was because in 1904, the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty that the victorious British military expedition to Lhasa forced the Tibetans to sign, effectively barred non-Tibetans from entering. While the move was ostensibly aimed at keeping the Russians out—the British feared they had their eyes on India—it effectively sealed an already inaccessible Tibet.