poojas separately. One was the eminent Sooryakaladi Bhattathiripadu, one of the ancient and well known namboodiri families, and other pundit from the Sri Ayyappa Temple at Hyderabad. It was a fulfilling moment for me, when the first homam and puja flame was kindled with the ghee wick, I had prepared and taken from  my home it self. The puja and samarpanam took nearly one hour, and it was with a gratifying and peaceful heart everybody started onto Darchen, the base camp for the Kailas parikrama.) There was big dogs roaming nearby and there were stories too of how some attacked the pilgrims. But fortunately no untoward instances were there, and all after dinner went to sleep. The sleep in the camp was refreshing.  After one or two hours, I woke up. Though the wind has abated the cold was biting, but still, it was so quiet everywhere. Wanting to go to the toilet tent, I got up then went outside. The scenery, landscape and atmosphere were all too beautiful to describe in words. The manasarover could distantly be seen through a misty veil, and the stars hung so low. A sort of light illuminated every thing in the camp surroundings as though from a search light. Once there were eight famous monastries around the manasarovar it self, but all which were later demolished, when the Chinese invaded Tibet. A few years back the Chinese government helped the Tibetans to renovate about three or four of the monastries, but the wealth in the monastries were all taken out. We went to nearby two monastries, chukku and Seralung which were recently  repaired, and while the trekking or during the jeep ride, many ruins of monastries could be seen too.