Circumambulation is the most common Buddhist act in the Himalaya and the least discussed. You keep the sacred object on your right — clockwise, and the direction is not negotiable — and you go round: a stupa three times on the way past, a temple daily, the Barkhor circuit in Lhasa in an unbroken human current, or, for the serious, the fifty-two kilometres round Mount Kailash. Some pilgrims perform the whole circuit in full-body prostrations, measuring the mountain in their own lengths, which can take weeks. The logic is merit by repetition, and the practice needs no literacy, no liturgy, and no permission.