The day of the Puja ..

April 23

We woke to a crystal blue sky after days of snowfall. Its incredible how quickly it can get hot once the sun comes in. An opportunity not to be missed to dry out everything by spreading it over the tent.

Today is the long awaited day of the Puja, the blessing by a Lama of the team and their gear. Only after a Puja do the Sherpas feel comfortable sleeping on the mountain. Its a ceremony hard to understand from a Western perspective. There is plenty of chanting, drums, throwing of rice, sweets that the kitchen probably spent the night preparing and rum and beer for the group. At the end of the ceremony a large flagstaff was hoisted with lines of prayer flags stretching to all directions of camp. Something I will have to google once the internet becomes readily available again.

Am now sitting in our common mezz tent and three yaks have just arrived bringing with them supplies for the next days. After their loads have just been taken from them they are now being fed which is apparently the only way to trick them to go so high up the valley beyond any greenery to consume.

In case the picture makes it through the green bags hold the oxygen bottles for most of the teams on Everest. Each bottle at 200bar and 3kg allows to add 2L of supplemental oxygen per minute for up to eight hours. Getting a teach in this afternoon but it will be some days before they will be needed.

The clouds have rolled in again this afternoon (and the temperature massively dropped...) bringing light snow back to the camp. However the forecast looks ok so our plan is to leave camp tomorrow at 5am to head up the hill and stay a night at Camp 1. Fingers crossed that the weather holds up so that we can start moving beyond the 5700m...