Today our Everest team had a chance to experience more of the unique culture of Nepal while continuing their dropback rest period before the upcoming push for the summit. Everest guide Terray Sylvester provides today’s expedition dispatch:
Hello! This is Terray calling in for the Madison Mountaineering Mount Everest and Lhotse expedition. It’s May 9th.
Our climbers are still resting in Namche as part of their dropback. We’ll fly back to base camp on Wednesday, the 11th.
Today we hiked up to Khumjung, a village just a little ways above Namche. We visited the monastery there where the monks were in the process of reading the Kangyur. It is a 108 volume set of scriptures that tells the life of The Buddha. It happens just once a year and the reading rotates from monastery to monastery around the valley. So it was kind of a special occasion to catch it there. We listened to part of that and we also looked at the reputed Yeti scalp, which is in the monastery there in Khumjung. Then we walked back and had lunch in Namche.
Now we are just relaxing before bed. All in all it was a really pleasant day and we’re looking forward to another one tomorrow.
We’ll be in touch!
Approaching Khumjung (📸: @terray_s)
Buddhist scriptures in the monastery at Khumjung (📸: @terray_s)
The mani stone walls in Khumjung, some of the longest in the Khumbu (📸: @terray_s)
Decorations in Khumjung (📸: @terray_s)
Walking above Namche (📸: @terray_s)
In addition to these expedition dispatches, you can also follow our teams as they make their attempts on the world’s most formidable mountains on:
– Amazon Alexa devices with the Madison Mountaineering Flash Briefing skill:
- Enable the skill and add to your flash briefing to hear our daily audio expedition updates on select expeditions. Just say, “Alexa, play my flash briefing.“
– Instagram:
