My travel diaries
Thursday 3 May, 2007 - Everest Base Camp, Tibet
We have another acclimatisation day at Base Camp today. Shortly after nine we walk down the road in the direction of the Rongbuk Monastery, 7km away. After a couple of hours of walking, mostly along a dusty road with jeeps and horse and carts driving past, our sirdar (sherpa leader) Sangye takes us to a place called the Zarongbuk Monastery up on a hill by the side of the track. It's a strange place. When we walk inside, there are 15 to 20 exuberant Tibetan women making a lot of noise, screaming and clearly taking a lot of interest in these strange foreign tourists. We all go down a trapdoor into an underground cave containing a Buddhist shrine, where two of our sherpas, Nima Dendi and Pasang, say prayers. After about three minutes we come back up again. As our heads appear above the trapdoor, each of us in turn is physically dragged up by the Tibetan women among much laughter and merriment. I ask Sangye who the women are. He says they come all the way from Shigatse to say prayers, but he is unable to explain why they come all that way, why there are no men among them, or indeed why they appeared to be taking the piss out of us!
As Sangye stays to perform a puja at the monastery, a ritual prayer to the gods for our safe passage up Everest, the rest of us continue our walk down to the 'Tibetan Village'. This is a line of large tents performing the role of souvenir shops and hotel accommodation to tourists driving to see Everest. If not part of an expedition to trek or climb Everest, tourist jeeps must stop and park up here. Anyone wishing to go any further up the road must either walk or employ one of the many horse and cart drivers available to hire as far as Base Camp.
We continue onwards and reach the Rongbuk Monastery about an hour later. This plays an important part in much of the early mountaineering literature. Most of the pioneering expeditions to climb Everest and explore its surrounding peaks, stopped off at the monastery to receive a puja from the monks prior to embarking on their climb. It's actually more of a village than a monastery, with whitewashed houses surrounding the main monastery building, and although the original monastery was destroyed by Chinese communists in the Cultural Revolution, I find it something of a disappointment after reading so much about it. There is a modern hotel slap opposite and a giant satellite dish in the entry courtyard. It also appears to be closed when we arrive, and just a single small shrine is open to take a look at.
We turn around and walk back to Base Camp. The others stop at the Tibetan Village for tea, but I continue onwards, reaching Base Camp again at 2.30. The weather has been frustrating all day. Every time the sun came out, I took my fleece off and put my sunglasses on, only to walk for 5 minutes and become freezing again when the sun disappeared behind a cloud and it started snowing. This process was repeated over and over for pretty much the entire walk back.
In the afternoon Mic teaches me to tie a few climbers' knots in the mess tent.
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