… (the pilgrim) approaches the mountain from the golden plains of the south, from the noon of life, in the vigour and full experience of life. He enters the red valley of Amitabha in the mild light of the sinking sun, goes through the portals of death between the dark northern and the multi-coloured eastern valleys when ascending the formidable Dölma-La, the Pass of Tara, the Saviouress – and he descends, as a new-born being, into the green valley of Aksobhya on the east of Kailas, where the poet-saint Milarepa composed his hymns, and from where the pilgrim again emerges into the open, sunny plains of the south, assigned to the Dhyani-Buddha Ratnasambhava, whose colour is that of gold. – Lama Anagarika Govinda: The Way of the White Clouds.