Trip to Mount Everest Base Camp

 Welcome to our trip to Everest base camp. Let us share some photos and videos of this amazing trip with you and we hope you will enjoy it. Our trip began in Kerala and we flew to Nepal and then to Lhasa.

Tibet

On the first day we visited Jokhang temple and Sera Monastery.  

Jokhang Temple
Jokhang Temple

Jokhang temple is the ‘spiritual heart of the city’ and the most sacred in Tibet. Its architecture features the Tibetan Buddhist style with cultural influences from China, India and Nepal. The golden roof offers splendid views of Barkhor- which is the market Square and it has a walkway for pilgrims to walk around the temple.

After visiting the temple we went to Sera Monastery.

Sera Monastery
Sera Monastery

This is one of the three most important university monasteries in Tibet. It is a complex of structures including ‘The great assembly hall’ and three colleges. These colleges where established to train monks over a 20 year program of ‘philosophical knowledge’ which concludes with a ‘Geshe’ degree.
This is the great assembly hall. Several religious rituals and rites take place here.

Visitors to Sera Monastery have the opportunity to witness monks ‘debating session’ in the ‘debating courtyard’. These debates are integral to the learning process in the college. Each Monk has a debating partner. They use dramatic gestures to punctuate the debating session. Each time a new question is asked that person strikes his outstretched left the palm with his right palm. We spent some time in the monastery watching the debate and headed back to hotel.

The next day we joined our tour group to visit Potala palace. 3700 m above sea level it is the highest palace in the world. Tibetan King Songtsen Gambo built this Palace in the sixth century.  Eventually monks came to rule Tibet and the palace was expanded and converted into winter residence of Dalai Lama in 1645.

Potala Palace Front View
Potala Palace – Tibet

It is divided into two sections- the Red Palace and the white palace .White Palace serves as the administrative section and red Palace as the spiritual section.

Cameras are not allowed inside the palace.  We were out of breath walking up the stairs of for Potala Palace due to altitude issues.

Everest Base Camp trip

Lhasa is 3660 m above sea level. There are less oxygen molecules at this altitude and the air is less dense. We had to have some rest to Acclimatize with this high altitude before our road trip to Everest base camp the next day.

We began our road trip from Lhasa to Everest Base Camp with our tour guide. Independent travel is not allowed in Tibet. So all foreigners going to Tibet must have their travel arranged through a travel agency before arriving in Lhasa.

The road to Everest base camp from Lhasa covers a distance of 613 km. We took the smooth road along Yarlung Zagbo River to Shigatse. Yarlung Zagbo is the upper stream off Brahmaputra River. We stayed in Shigatse for that night and continued our journey to Tingari on the next today. You can see small agricultural villages scattered around the mountain valleys. The flat roof houses are simple in structure and colour. These rural Tibetan people are living a simple and natural lifestyle even in this harsh environment. They are not fighting it, they live peacefully and harmoniously. We could feel serenity everywhere. We now understood why people believe God Lives in these mountain peaks.

Mount Everest North Face
Mount Everest North Face view

We passed through some of the high passes on this route. The road was really good and we were excited to go through these high passes, even though we had visible signs of altitude sickness. The air was getting thinner and thinner. We continued the journey to Mount Everest national nature reserve. We could see the majestic Himalayan range at Gawu La Pass. Our plan was to spend one night at Everest base camp and enjoy the incredible view of the North face of Mount Everest at sunset and sunrise. But we had to change our plans due to Altitude sickness. We were at 5200 m above sea level. Our tour guide led us to a home run tented camp. They gave some hot food and we laid down for some time in the tent. We really hoped we could stay there overnight just to by inhaling oxygen from the small cylinder. But sickness was very bad, So we decided to drive back the same night.

The View of Mount Everest was breathtaking, not just because we were at the top of the World, but  also the high  altitude literally left us breathless. Tibet was a wonder land for us -Land of Mountains.

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