Location
Deqin County, Diqing, Yunnan
Meili's main peak, Kawagebo at 6,740 meters, i...
Meili's main peak, Kawagebo at 6,740 meters, is the foremost of the eight sacred mountains of Tibet and remains unclimbed to this day. Each autumn and winter the first rays of dawn turn the snow peak to gold — the "golden sunrise on the mountain" that stops every heart. After the disaster that befell the 1991 Sino-Japanese expedition, Meili was permanently closed to climbing — here reverence stands above all conquest.
In Tibetan culture Kawagebo is the mountain god Rongzain Kawagebo, holding sway over life, death, fortune and misfortune across all eastern Tibet. The Thirteen Peaks of Meili stand arrayed like white war gods, the Taizi range running 150 kilometers. Each late autumn, Tibetans from Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu come in crowds to circle the mountains; the inner and outer pilgrimage routes have run for centuries — before the white stupa of the Feilai Temple viewpoint, prayer flags crack in the wind.
In January 1991, seventeen members of a joint Sino-Japanese expedition (six Chinese, eleven Japanese) were caught by a massive avalanche at Camp III at 5,100 meters and all perished — the second deadliest disaster in mountaineering history. After a further attempt in 1996, Kawagebo was permanently listed as closed to climbing. A Tibetan proverb says: "The mountain god is not beyond defeat — but above all he must not be offended." Meili is thus the only major peak in the world closed entirely out of faith.
君不见，卡瓦格博雪千丈，日照峰头金珊瑚。 — "Do you not see — Kawagebo's snows a thousand fathoms deep, sunrise making the summit a coral of gold?"—— Modern verse on Meili
Yubeng village lies hidden in Kawagebo's embrace; before the road, one walked for hours over the Nanzong pass to enter. The Sacred Waterfall is holy water Kawagebo took back from heaven, and pilgrims bathe in it; the Ice Lake below the peak is mirror-blue. At dawn on the Feilai Temple platform, hundreds of visitors stand with old Tibetan grandmothers waiting for the golden sunrise — when the first light turns Kawagebo gold-red, the crowd falls silent: a ritual shared by nature and faith.