Another early start today and another long drive but we all dived into breakfast with a feeling of anticipation. We will get our first glance of Mt Everest today we hope – provided the cloud cover is not too low. Drove along the Friendship Highway for most of the morning towards Tingri and simply soaked in the atmosphere. All of a sudden we spotted Mt Everest in the far distance!!!!! UNBELIEVABLE… to see this with my own 2 eyes – not a photo, not a picture, not on TV but looking directly at this world renowned sight……. Once again I just stood in amazement and realised how lucky I am to have these opportunities.

Stopped in Tingri for lunch where we were advised to have a big lunch as we might not have much for dinner tonight at the monastery guesthouse or camp. Can you believe…out in the middle of nowhere I got the best roast chicken I have ever tasted!! We all ate like we were not going to be fed for a month!

Left Tingri and admired a seemingly infinite series of broad ridge-top paths and alpine meadows leading to Lamna La pass (5150m) overlooking splendid panorama. It is such a privilege to explore rarely-visited areas amid this glacier-carved environment. Then we hit the dreaded "road under construction" which is the only way to get to the base camp. It was like driving over corrugated iron with multiple potholes thrown in for good measure! Our driver was abysmal with the other buses leaving us far behind as we negotiated the multiple police checkpoints along the way – I don't think I’ve ever had my passport out so many times in 1 day before. We knew we had to go slowly but NOT at the snails pace he was moving at if we were going to get to Rongphu in time to take photos of Everest at sunset!! We asked the driver if he could go a bit faster and then …….he stopped the bus and told us all to get out!! When we did not move he then tried to turn the bus around and put the back end over the cliff…I screamed and others, who had a smattering of Chinese, pleaded with the driver to be sensible! Finally he begrudgingly agreed to keep going but of course he had lost “face” by this time so the rest of the day was pure misery. The thing that kept us going was the anticipation of being up close to Everest and going to the highest monastery in the world.

But that was not to be the end of a bad day……we arrived at Rongphu Monastery to be told there were no beds available and that we would all have to stay in tents…….no bloody way was I doing that….pulled out my contract and showed the guide what I had booked while Sandra (my room-mate) tried to ring the company and then the senior guide. The guide acted totally perplexed and asked me how could she fix it…..we told her that was her problem and we expected our contract to be met. Sandra and I refused to get on the bus again and kept demanding our contractual rights……I learned the more noise we made the more likely we were to get something achieved….then sure enough a “room” was suddenly found for us. Unfortunately it was only one room which Sandra and I got and the others (some of whom should also have got a room) had to go on and sleep in the tents L…….we settled into our room which we found out was not a guesthouse but one of the monks rooms that had been given up for us. No luxuries here….toilet was quite a walk away in the freezing cold and was a hole in the ground and if that wasn’t bad enough…….. We had to go out in the backyard and had to negotiate our way through yaks. OMG I was petrified by the size of the yaks and their massive horns and imagined being gored to death in this desolate place!!

Rongphu Monastery is located at the northern foot of Mt. Everest. The monastery was originally built in 1902 by a Nyingmapa Lama. The area where Rongphu Monastery was built has been used by monks and hermits for meditation for over 400 years. The monastery is located 5000m above sea level near the north side base camp of Mount Everest, making it the highest monastery in the world. It is a monastery of the Nyingma sect of Buddhism. It now houses about thirty monks and nuns, but in the past it housed as many as 500. Hermitage meditation caves dot the cliffs around the monastery, and many stones carved with prayers and sacred symbols line the paths to them.