Mount Kailash

31.0672°N, 81.3119°E.

Free-standing peak in the Gangdisê range of Ngari Prefecture, western Tibet Autonomous Region, rising to 6,638 metres above sea level. Mount Kailash is the source region for four of Asia's major rivers — the Indus, the Sutlej, the Brahmaputra, and the Karnali tributary of the Ganges — each flowing from glaciers within roughly 100 kilometres of its summit. The mountain is sacred in four religions simultaneously: Hindu (residence of Shiva), Tibetan Buddhist (abode of Demchok), Jain (site of Rishabhadeva's liberation), and Bön (seat of the sky goddess Sipaimen). Pilgrims complete a 52-kilometre kora circuit at altitudes consistently above 4,800 metres; the route has been walked continuously for well over a thousand years and remains in active ritual use today. The summit has never been climbed, by long-standing international agreement with Chinese authorities and out of religious deference to the four traditions that hold the mountain sacred.

Four faiths agree on almost nothing in the world except where the centre of it actually is.