Big Brothers Big Sisters Everest Base Camp Trek Dispatch
May 12, 2010 – PART 1: The Monasteryery
The Pangboche Monastery
This is Leila Silveira reporting from Pheriche. Today was such a long day that I have decided to break this dispatch into two parts.
We left lower Pangboche to Upper Pangboche around 9am where we had a blessing ceremony scheduled with Lama Geshe.Upper Pangboche is situated 525ft/160m above Lower Pangboche and our lodge. The weather was completely clear with mountains views all around us as we hiked upwards.
Upper Pangboche is a beautiful little village full of large, old juniper trees and all the houses are clustered around the old gompa.
The Pangboche monastery was built in 1667 and it is the oldest gompa in the Khumbu. We planned to visit the monastery but first we went to Lama Geshe’s home where a special ceremony awaited us.
Brenda has recently lost her brother, and today Lama Geshe was going to bless her as well as all the team members. It was a very touching and special blessing. Lama Geshe taught us how to repeat a prayer which we all did the best we could.
After the visit, we stopped quickly at the Pangboche monastery, just to have an idea what it was like in comparison with the Tengboche monastery that we visited the day before. The Pangboche monastery is really old, small and very simple.
Unfortunately we couldn’t stay too long since we had a busy schedule ahead of us; we still needed to trek to Pheriche where we will have a day rest for acclimatization tomorrow, which we were all looking forward to.
Upper Pangboche
Trevor receives his blessing from Lama Geshe.
Marta with the lama
Brenda with Lama Geshe
Chris receives the famous head bump during her blessing.
Doug is happy to be blessed for the second time by Lama Geshe. His first time was on his last trip in 2006.
James receives his blessing.
Andrew with Lama Geshe
Brenda and James outside Lama Geshe's home after receiving their blessings.