Mani Rimdu festival observe most of Sherpa villages of Nepal. The renowned monastery called Thyngboche 3800m. lying in the Everest region and also situated in lap of Ama Dablam 6,812m. mountain is the main pla ce. From here the visitor can view the highest mountain of the World, Mt. Everest 8848m, and other snow capped mountains. To arrive here it takes 12 days from the Jiri and 4 days trek from Lukla. From Kathmandu to Lukla, it takes 35 minutes of flights. On this occasion most of visitors from the World wide comes to see it. Seeing all the ceremony, returned through the Everest base camp (Kala Patthar 5545m.) back to Lukla & flight to Kathmandu.
Gurgling stream enroute to Namche Bazaar Mani Rimdu Festival celebrations at Thyanboche Monastery
Another day heralds another climb and today it was Deboche (3,800 meters). The small lodge that we decided to put up at was cold and breezy and it is here that we re-learned the theory of relativity, as we know it. The cost of living goes up exponentially with every 100 metres you climb and a boiled egg on the menu at Rs. 50 made me feel a little less famished.
We moved on to Dingboche the next day where we spent the day at Snow Lion Lodge and while resting our weary bodies, we occupied ourselves by devising a new game of distinguishing grazing yaks from the boulders. Next day once again we side trekked to Chhukung (4,730 metres) and back. I was up at 5:15 am the next morning, eager to shoot the sunrays streaking through the snow-clad peaks. Breakfast over, we headed off for Dhuglha (4,620 meters), our next night halt. The place had just two tiny lodges and we tumbled into one of them to enjoy the hospitality of Tashi Tshering, the first sherpa to scale Mt. Everest twice with different teams on consecutive days. We trekked along winding paths almost all day to reach our destination, the tiny hamlet of Gorak Shep (5,160 metres) around 3.00 p.m.
On reaching Gorak Shep I asked my team members whether anyone would be interested in spending the night in a tent near Kala Pathar as ironically, one cant sight Mt. Everest from EBC, which lies about 500 metres ahead of Gorak Shep on the Khumbu glacier. The ambient temperature at that time was -10 degree Celsius. The count at 3:30 p.m. was ten; at 3:45 p.m. it went down to six and finally shrank to four including myself by 4:00 p.m. We decided to hurry to the top with the tent and other amenities before the numbers declined further. We pitched a tent in flashlight around 150-200 feet short of the summit of Kala Pathar.
Freezing cold would be an understatement to describe the temperature during the night. The digital thermometer read at -35 degree Celsius. The cold be dammed, I was more worried about whether my SLR Canon EOS 30 would work and if the weather would clear up. Burning camphor in trays, we sang and talked in the confines of the tent trying to keep insanity at bay. Snow fell and a gale force wind blew and yet it was so silent that we could hear ourselves thinking, speculating… We had made it till there, and survived.....More On Request |
