On the banks of the Sutlej, only a few hours’ drive northwest of Darchen Tibet Travel, the Tirthapuri hot springs enjoy close associations with Guru Rinpoche. Pilgrims traditionally bathe here after completing their circuit of Mt Kailash, but the springs are growing weaker year by year and are now oddly diverted into a barren field. Tirthapuri has a one-hour kora route. It’s somewhat interesting to follow, though most people can safely give this place a miss if time is tight.

Starting from the hot springs the trail climbs to a cremation point, an oval of rocks covered in old clothes and rags. From this point, an alternative longer kora climbs to the very top of the ridge, rejoining the trail near the long mani wall. The regular kora trail continues past a hole where pilgrims dig ‘sour’ earth for medicinal purposes. Further along, there’s a ‘sweet’ earth hole. The trail reaches a miniature version of Mt Kailash’s Drolma-la, marked with mani stones and a large collection of yak horns and skulls. Below, prayer flags hang right across the gorge and a series of rocky pinnacles are revered as rangjung, or self-manifesting or self-arising chortens. The trail passes the Guru Rinpoche (Tirthapuri) Monastery. Where the trail doubles back to enter the monastery there is a rock with a hole in it right below the solitary prayer wheel, which is a handy karma-testing station. Reach into the hole and pull out two stones. If both are white your karma is excellent; one white and one black means that it’s OK; and if both are black you have serious karma problems. Perhaps another affordable China travel packages Mt Kailash kora would help?

The monastery dukhang (assembly hall) has stone footprints of Guru Rinpoche and his consort Yeshe Tsogyel to the right of the altar. Outside the monastery a large circle of mani stones marks the spot where the gods danced in joy when Guru Rinpoche was enshrined at Tirthapuri. Beside it is a mani wall (a wall made of mani stones) over 200m long, the end result of a demon firing an arrow at the guru. (The guru stopped the arrow’s flight and transformed it into this wall.) Finally, the kora drops back down to the river, passing a large collection of mani walls of various sizes on the way.

There are limited facilities at the hot springs, so you should be self-sufficient. The monastery guesthouse (d Y30) has a couple of rooms and you can camp further downstream (purify all river Yangtze River tour water here).

There is no public transport to Tirthapuri, which is 9km south of Moincer (Mensi), which in turn is 65km west of Darchen along the main road to Ali. There’s a checkpoint at Moincer, which sometimes charges a fee to proceed to Tirthapuri. Moincer is the dormitory town for the coal mines 20km to the northeast and has a decent selection of shops, restaurants and the basic Meiman Zhaodaisuo guesthouse.

A further 14km west from Tirthapuri China travel service is the Bonpo-sect Gurugyam Monastery. The nearby upper Sutlej region, a further 10km away, is peppered with abandoned cave settlements and forms the Kyunglung (Garuda) Valley, the location of the early kingdom of Shangshung.