WE ROLLED WEST TO THE CITY of Shigatse, a brilliant journey in warm sunshine, along the last paved roads we would see until the Kunlun Shan, the range on Tibet's northern edge, almost a month later. Shigatse is Tibet's second city, spiritually speaking, home of the powerful Tashilhunpo monastery and seat of the Panchen Lama, the Dalai Lama's sometime rival. Tashilhunpo's library was the original source of lonely Prince Rinpungpa's letter and a clear way station on our journey. If you took out all of the prince's mantras and meditations, all his rambling symbolism and theological poetry—that is, if you removed the inner journey to an interior Shambhala—then he gave some pretty clear directions from here on out. From Shigatse:

Turn to the north and west and take the high plateau to the sacred mountain of Kailas ... From Kailas continue northwest to Ladakh ... wind north through a maze of treacherous mountains ... come out in the land of the Paksik, horsemen who wear white turbans and quilted robes filled with cotton ... a barren desert devoid of water will stretch away before you like the desolate paths of suffering that run through this world of illusion.

That's about how it went. We had a Land Cruiser and driver and no intention of returning to Lhasa, as our visas required. Tibet swallowed us, day after day spent pounding over steep ranges and sleeping in roadside tents on icy plains. We saw hardly a soul: It was August, and the nomads, with their black tents and colorful costumes, were off in the highest pastures. I counted fewer than ten horses in ten days.

Finally we entered a wider, higher plain, a naked and sere landscape of barren beauty, the dry, crystalline grandeur of the west. Days were a progression of rotten villages, spitting rain, and, everywhere, endless gangs of road workers, China's new money tearing up the plateau for new roads, bridges, mines, and security posts. In one dumpy garrison town of thin air, karaoke bars, and "beauty parlors" (a euphemism for what Seamus called "knocking shops"), I stopped to use the last phone we'd see for a while, hoping to reach my wife.

A pretty Englishwoman, about 40, took the booth next to mine. She dialed her travel agent in London: "I just felt I had to call and let you know what is happening, yes, it's horrible really, just awful, it's just been a huge disappointment, the guide is terrible, all he does is sleep, or lie to us, the other people are all right but I'm just tired of the games, really, the flirting, I don't think people came here for the right reason, really, everyone is trying to rip us off, or lie to us, all day every day, and I'm just fed up, it's not what I expected, the guide is just trying to get sex from tourists, he won't keep his hands off me, and he told everyone, ‘Don't tell Jerry,' because he already slept with Rebecca, who is married to Jerry, and so we are supposed to cover up for him, which I won't, it's not right."

Tourism was in a get-rich-quick phase, the Tibetans unhinged by the soaring wealth around them, the Chinese pushing deeper everywhere, always. On day 30 of the trip, 1,300 miles in and well behind schedule, we were approaching the holy mountain of Kailas when we saw a Japanese woman standing in the road, tears streaming down her face. Circling Kailas is supposed to bring great merit, but it hadn't worked for the Japanese girl, named Ona. She'd been dumped by her boyfriend and then robbed at a hotel while trying to hitchhike back to Lhasa. She'd lost her passport, her money, and her faith. Some Hindu pilgrims were feeding her; now we drove her back to the hotel, but the housemaids called her a whore and a liar, and then threw fistfuls of pebbles at her.

We dropped Ona at a police station and, as we pulled away, I gave her $200 in an envelope, with my return address. The way to Shambhala is "born from your store of merit," Rinpungpa says.

Our oxygen intake was at 68 percent of normal when we reached Darchen, the town at 15,090 feet that serves as an ugly base camp for the pilgrimage around Kailas. Leaving our driver and picking up a teenage porter, we hiked the 32-mile route in three days, going counterclockwise around the black, snow-stained mountain. Traffic was light; our first day, we saw only a few ragged Buddhist pilgrims, one group of orange-clad Hindus on horseback, four Americans in tents, and a single, mute white woman gleefully spinning a prayer wheel. We slept in a monastery of the Nyingma, or Ancient Ones, the original Buddhists of Tibet. Like the monk on the train, the abbot, a high reincarnation, discouraged me from continuing on. Meditate more, he said, feeding me balls of yak butter mixed with tsampa, or barley flour, from his own fingertips. "Think only of others and you may reach Shambhala someday." I would have preferred some outright encouragement, but when I pressed, the abbot burst into song.

We walked in the company of the wildest creatures we would see in Tibet: five tall, handsome nomads in brocaded robes, leading packhorses covered with bells. The women had braided their hair with cockle shells, coral, jade, and silver. The men wore sheepskin coats, laughed easily, and had no idea what a dried apricot was. We were all shy, each party awed by the other.

Together we crossed the notorious 18,370-foot Dolma La pass, a place of symbolic rebirth. A lammergeier, one of the immense carrion birds found at Tibetan sky burials, glided overhead, mocking our heaving lungs as Seamus and I, ignoring the warning that powerful demons guarded the pass, sat down to a meal of Danish luncheon meat and Nepali cheese. The nomads went on, their horses jingling; lower down, by the greenish Lake of Compassion, we would pass them taking tea. One long day downhill, through icefields and under rainbows, another night, and we were back in Darchen, with its massage parlors and rancid hotels.

We had slain the demons of desire with our swords of wisdom, laid ignorance low with our overwhelming compassion, and achieved the special knowledge of wet feet. We celebrated in a restaurant with good whiskey and a memorable array of Sino-Tibetan specialties:

Sic! But the joke was on me. That evening, my money belt disappeared from the hotel, probably as I dozed near the iron stove. The holy mountain seemed to mock people like me, unserious materialists who were merely passing by.

That said, it works, this karma thing. About a month after the trip was over, I received a Japanese postal order for $200. If I had given Ona all of my money, I would still have it today.