We had another Puja. Today after breakfast, we gathered by the altar-monument-like little construction which was made out of stones by Sherpas one day ago. As in the other ritual everything was prepared diligently; candies, biscuits, and other sorts of food, little ornaments made out of yak butter, plastic flowers and of course one bottle of whisky! Besides the presents presented to Chomolungma through Buddha, samples from our mountaineering equipment were lined up, a little piece of butter was smeared and the ritual started. While in one corner holy grass was burned, our Lama Sherpa who is at the same time in the team said prayers for a while. Meanwhile we grabbed rice and threw it in the direction of the altar. After the prayers were finished, this time we danced in a ring arm in arm together with Sherpas! Finally for three times, we grabbed the flour, and altogether we threw it in the air.

After the ritual, the process of the constitution of our advanced base camp continued. For us to be able to move to a single tent, we need to dig a bit more ice! We hope to finish carrying the stones and breaking the ice until tomorrow. We are about to be done with the communication and office tent. We have a little generator but it doesn’t work all the time, we are not done yet with out solar energy system. The biggest problem with our computer equipment here is the cold temperature. Before starting to work, we have to put them inside our clothes and warm them up! Yet out technology stuff is as good as to make the other teams jealous, we hope the climb will be as good too.

After a several days of break, our technologic setup is up again. We are at the advanced base camp from now on. We moved upwards from the base camp on April 12th. By a 5 to 6 hours’ walk we arrived at the base camp at 5800 meters. After spending a day here we departed for the advanced base camp on April, 14th. Again after a 5 hours’ walk we arrived at 6400 meters. All these walks are done on the East Rongbuk glacier region. It starts at the bottom of the glacier which is covered with soil, and goes on over the rocky moraine. All the equipment that has to be carried from the base camp to the advanced base camp is carried by yaks. The poor animals carry the heavy load quitely despite the difference in altitude. During the walk we gave way to the yak groups and we tried to move on without cutting their way and scaring them. Not only our load is being carried of course, the load for the advanced base camp of all the other climbs is being carried by yaks. These days East Rongbuk is becoming festive thanks to the long convoys of hundreds of yaks.

Regarding our advanced base camp, we are on a quite bumpy terrain as it is located on moraine. Here again we have one kitchen tent, our common dining tent and our communication tent. Except those, our and the sherpas’ little tents. It takes time for all of these to really settle down. We will make use of our acclimatization days by settling down. We are at a quite important altitude. We didn’t have any serious problems in our team. We hope it continues like that.

Tomorrow there’s our second Puja ritual and we will once again ask permission from Chomolungma.

The plan changed, we were stayed at the camp today. In the morning, our Puja ritual took long time and the weather was a bit too windy. So we decided not to leave and stay another day, after the ritual.
“Puja” is a ritual that all teams do before they depart. At a kind of place of worship made of stones, incenses arr burned, various food and beverages are presented to Budda. Several Lamas say prayers during the ritual, meanwhile rice is served and sometimes it is scattered in the middle. Towards the end of the ritual prayer flags are hanged on the stones so that they are spread outwards. The purpose of this ritual is to show respect to the mountain and take permission through Buddha for the people who are going to climb the foot of Chomolungma. Our ritual took around one hour. Two sherpas from our team who are Lamas at the same time prayed. Food, candies, wine and whisky is presented, and after the ritual these presents were distributed to the people joined the ritual! They said we were going to do such a ritual at the advanced base camp too.

After the ritual we packed our stuff, we are going to leave tomorrow morning in any weather condition. As we wrote yesterday, we might not be able to send any messages until we arrive at the advanced base camp.
Today we celebrated Serhan’s birthday. Our cooks baked as a delicious cake. We sang altogether “Konyalim”* as the birthday song!

*”Konyalim” is a Turkish folksong.