religions Article Where the Heroes and Sky-Goers Gather: A Study of the Saurat . a Pilgrimage Paul B. Donnelly Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, Northern Arizona University, Box 6031, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA; Paul.Donnelly@nau.edu Received: 3 July 2017; Accepted: 16 August 2017; Published: 21 August 2017 Abstract: Tibetan and Him¯ alayan Buddhist doctrine and meditative traditions have been extensively studied and are well-known even to non-scholars, but pilgrimage and other non-elite practices have received far less attention. Pilgrimage is one of the most important practices for Tibetan and Him¯ alayan Buddhists, whether traditional scholars, ordinary monks, lay yogis, or Buddhist laypeople. Scholarship on pilgrimage has increased significantly since the 1990s, and has tended to focus on territories within the political boundaries of the Tibetan provinces of the People’s Republic of China. This study looks at a pilgrimage in what was once the far western end of the Tibetan empire, but is now within the political boundaries of India. Being outside of the People’s Republic of China, this pilgrimage escaped the disruption of such practices that occurred within the PRC during the Cultural Revolution and after. Having interviewed people in the region, and performed the pilgrimage myself, this study shows that this pilgrimage possesses features common to Tibetan pilgrimage to sites of tantric power, but also has its own unique qualities. This study provides new data that contributes to the growing body of knowledge of Tibetan pilgrimage and to our understanding of such practices among the Buddhists of Him ¯ alayan India. Keywords: pilgrimage; Tibetan Buddhism; Him¯ alayan Buddhism; tantra 1. Introduction In the opening of his book Pilgrimage in Tibet, Alex McKay (McKay 1998, p. 1) asserts that pilgrimage is a core element of religious practice in the Him¯ alayan cultural world. McKay concludes, that “through an examination of pilgrimage in Tibet we can, therefore, gain great insight into a wide variety of aspects of Tibetan history, culture, and identity, as well as illuminating wider fields and disciplines of study.” The doctrinal and meditative traditions of Him¯ alayan Buddhism have been available for study in the west largely through the cooperation of the monastic and scholarly elite members of these traditions. Information about the popular practices that constitute the religious lives of most Him¯ alayan people, whether monastic or lay, has been far less available or sought. Such practices, and the underlying worldview, are found throughout the Him¯ alayan regions and form the basis of a unifying culture across them, with pilgrimage being one of the most central and pervasive. The scholarly study of Tibetan pilgrimage is a relatively new field of inquiry. A few scholars such as Guiseppe Tucci (e.g., Tucci 1988) and Robert Ekvall (e.g., Ekvall and Downs 1987), were working before the Chinese takeover of Tibet, but after 1959 scholarly access to Tibetan pilgrimage practices was severely restricted. Beginning in the mid–1980s, the PRC began to relax restrictions on Tibetan religious practices, and scholars were able to observe pilgrimages, though the question of how restricted or transformed these practices were since the pre-Chinese period now needed to be taken into consideration. The mid to late 1990s were a landmark period for scholarship on Tibetan pilgrimage. In 1994–1995 Tibet Journal published four special editions on sacred space in Tibetan cultural regions. The articles were subsequently published in 1999 as, Sacred Spaces and Powerful Places in Tibetan Culture: Religions 2017, 8, 157; doi:10.3390/rel8080157 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions