Wow. Tengboche is beautiful. And cold. But mostly beautiful. You have a crystal clear view of Everest from the village and it is stunning. There is a buddhist monastery here which is nested in the mountains and open to tourist visitors during prayer time at 4pm each day. And when I say "visitors" I mean a large selection of interfering, disrespectful, annoying idiots who think the world revolves around them and for whom the rules do not seem to apply. Apart from these penis munchers who embarrassingly represent us, the tourists, there were some genuinely respectful people who witnessed the Buddhist prayers while trying not to laugh at the dickhead who sat next to the massive Buddhist horns and got an unexpected bass blast when they least expected it and most deserved it. Ha. That's karma, you tosser.
Ok, let's rewind and start with our earliest morning yet. Up at 6:30am, bags packed, breakfast preordered and we got away on the dot of 8am. A relatively modest climb and several photo stops later we began a gradually steepening descent down to Phungi Thanga for tea. Unfortunately what comes down must go up. We joined up with Amy and Warren and also Nick and Tiana, an american couple who also endured our bout of charades on the first night. We went up a lesser travelled path and went on a relentless uphill march until we reached Tengboche at 12:15, ahead of our porter Prem and completing the day's walk in only 4 hours 15 mins, way ahead of time. Result.
We then took a tour of the local tourist centre, watched a short film about the Tengboche monks and monastery, and browsed the exhibition until prayer time. And now we're up to date.
We felt that we'd behaved as well as we could in the prayer room, given the general disrespect being shown by people who really should know better. So we thought we'd quietly leave and get a chance to vent our communal spleen until we felt better. Karma seemed to be working, though, as almost in reward for our behaviour, the thick clouds parted just enough to see the peak of Everest in the setting sun as we left the monastery. Cheers, Buddha.
Anyway, we headed back to our partially-built teahouse to rant, eat and play cards. Now in our toasty 9 degrees C room, it's time to catch some shuteye before attempting to catch the sunrise over Everest tomorrow morning, which is not to be missed!