five glorious mountains

April 16th

I woke up, opened my window to 5 big glorious mountains. Wind is blowing snow off of one of the mountains making it look like a mango flavoured cloud since the sun is lighting the snow so intimitely. I hear Juk Juk bells ringing below me, clanging away. I tried the yak steak last night but it wasn't the same as my Christmas Yak steak in China. This yak was lighter in colour, more fatty texture and tasted distinctly different. Kami, our Sherpa guide told me that it was a Buffulo steak. It's funny because Buddhists can't kill animals even it it's to eat but they can buy meat from a butcher and close their eyes while he kills the animal. Well, apparently Yaks are sacred animals and so that's why I ate Buffalo instead. I watched the sunrise up from behind a mountain this morning, the rays lighting up the valley below me and the mountain peaks to the right. I think that the sun rose from behind Cholatse6335m and Taboche 6495m.

We stopped in TEngboche and visited a monastery. It's similar to the one I visited in Shangri-La(Zhondian) in China. This one was built in the 1600's , was much smaller and only 40 monks live here. It was rebuild 20 years ago because of a fire and many of the ornaments inside were brand new. Next,we went to a teahouse in Tengboche close to the monastery. Almost all of our group had rara noodles which are a lot like instant noodles with a few slivers of vegetables in it.

Pengboche 3989m has a lot of rock walls that separate the fields. I wondered why? the fields were so small and there were so many of them. I thought they were to keep the dark sandy dirt that the potatos grow in from blowing away in the wind. ONe of the two Pete's from New Zealand that was trekking with our group guessed that it was to separate all of the pieces of land that different people owned or to keep the animals out. Papa, as I've come to call my old Coach Eoin, the man who is in charge of the trek said that the ground is so rocky here that in order to plant crops the locals need to clear the fields of rocks, and where to carry them all? So they pile the rocks into walls.

Pete, who's from New Zealand told me that the South part of New Zealand can get as cold as -15! That's nuts. Also, from anywhere on the island you're no more than 15 miles from the sea.