Today has been a wonderful day. It’s been warm pretty much all day and we
started the morning (after showering to be clean for the ceremony) with a
Puja. This was almost a 3 hour ceremony and is one of the two big
celebrations of the trip; it’s done so that the Gods will provide safe
passage up Everest and is a Biddhist ceremony that’s very important to the
Sherpas. We had our crampons, ice axes and other bits and pieces of choice
blessed. It started off with singing and offerings and rice throwing, and we
all took lots of photos – the offerings included huge bowls of food and
drinks with something smoking at the side the whole time. We were given milk
tea or an alcoholic beverage (all of the Sherpas had the alcoholic version)
and sat in the sun to watch. Next a huge flag with massive lines of prayer
flags attached was raised onto the alter and the prayer flags almost
inclosed our whole camp; we also had another piece of string tied round our
necks as a blessing – this time multi coloured. It continued with
chocolates, popcorn, other snacks, beers, cokes and shots of both whiskey
and chang being handed out to everyone (I tactfully avoided the alcohol
besides when they were pouring spoonfuls of a liquid from a mug into
everyone’s right palm which we were meant to sip, which we discovered to be
beer), however other members of the team soon discovered that the effects of
alcohol are much stronger at altitude and our ladder practice afterwards was
promptly cancelled! One of the reasons behind the alcohol was that the
dancing that followed is meant to be better when drunk! As you can see in
the photo, most of us then got in a long line in front of the alter, put our
arms round each other, and attempted to follow the Sherpas’ dance. It was
much more difficult than it looked, but it was brilliant fun and lots of
people were singing. I forgot to mention – before this happened, when we all
stood up to clear the floor for dancing we had to throw both rice and flour
in the air. After we did this the next part of the ceremony was smearing
flour all over each other. All of our faces were covered and we had
brilliant fun.
The rest of the afternoon I spent with Becky and Mollie, other young British
female climbers with Henry Todd, and meeting Bonita Norris. It’s now dinner
time, so I have to go. Ttfn.