Potala Palace

Norbulingka

Jokhang Temple

Trepung Monastery

Barhkore Street

Sera Monastery

Mt.Namcharbawa

Ranwu Lake

Everest base camp (16900 ft, 5150 m) and the Rongphu Glacier are less than 2 hours (not including rest stops) above the monastery. The road to the base camp, which takes about 40 minutes by vehicle, can be bypassed for the first 30 minutes by taking a path that stays high along the east? side of the valley. From the entrance gate of the lhakhang, follow the trail from the monastery toward the freshwater spring. Continue past the pipe and traverse along the ridge. In less than 10 minutes reach two stone monuments at the top of a ridge spur. The path forks here; the right branch descends to the base-camp road in 20 minutes. The left fork stays on the ridge, leading to the ruins of several old nunneries and past an unusual gathering of small, crudely built stone huts. The Rongphu Valley was once a well-known meditational retreat where Buddhist hermits would have themselves sealed into one of these huts for a year, three years, or even a lifetime. Food and water were passed to them daily by an unseen servant through an opening in the wall.

A trail descends to the road from the lower retreats in 15 minutes. Initially the road parallels a tumbling but much smaller Dzakaa Chhu, though as the valley opens out the road and the river diverge to opposite sides of a broad gravel plain. The stones and glacial debris here are beautifully patterned; some pieces look like painted works of art rather than ancient layers of sedimentary deposits. With Everest so close, chances are that some of these rocks are actually pieces of the mountain that have been carried down to the plain by grand glaciers of the past.

Before reaching the low morainal hills separating this part of the valley from the end of the glacier, the road swings around a large rock slide that has fallen from the east ? ridge. At the base of this slide are two mud-and-stone monuments and a chataen. This is a particularly good location for viewing Everest. The mountain is very close and the broad yellow band of rock across its North Face almost glows with its geologic antiquity. These colorful layers of compressed clay, slit, and limestone near the summit are a tribute to the cataclysmic forces that shaped the Himalaya range, for they were once sediments at the bottom of an ancient ocean.

Along the top of the rock slide are the ruins of Sherab Chholing, a small nunnery. Numerous square chotaen have been reconstructed between the gigantic boulders; a hermit monk now tends a small rebuilt lhakhang. A trail leading to this temple climbs the north side of the slide. Beyond here the road enters a series of gravel hills that mark the advance and retreat of the Rongphu Glacier. At the far side of these deposits, within the elbow of the last hill before the glacier's terminus, is Everest base camp. This is the most popular site used by expeditions, for it is protected from the wind and is supplied with fresh water from a natural spring. It was the base camp for the 1924 British Everest Expedition.