Day 28 - Pujah

There was quite a storm over night and we have woken up to a very different landscape. The ugly moraine now has a carpeting of snow!

ABC with a dusting of snow

Today is the Puja when a local monk will bless us and our equipment and ask the mountain deities and spirits to treat us kindly.

Putting up the prayer flags

Our equipment to be blessed

The altar and food and drink to be blessed

The ceremony is mainly the monk chanting to communicate with the mountain deities and spirits and then he blesses our equipment and us by throwing holy rice over everything. Then we drink and eat the blessed food and drink and finally have blessed flour thrown at us! It actually takes quite a long time!

Late in the afternoon we start to get more news from the South Side - both the scale of the incident and the fact that the South Side seems to have closed for the season. It is not clear why but that is certainly going to make the headlines!

We start to get worried that our team may call things off, either in fear of the mountain or because of issues with family back home. Not knowing why the South Side has been closed leads to a lot of speculation. Unsurprisingly, problems arise but at first it is not clear what they are but it seems to be about money. Well, we thought that something was coming and at least if they are just asking for more money we can go ahead with the climb and sort the finances out later. Having to call off the expedition and come back next year would be really disappointing and interfering with other aspects of life - it is hard to get a job when want to take more than two months off for a dangerous expedition in the first year!
In fact, it turns out that the agreement between our company, the local agents and the Sherpas is very unclear and they are saying that they won't continue until it is resolved. Quite how this has happened and why it has taken until now to arise is not clear but is yet another concern at the organisation of this expedition. A few frantic phone calls later, it appears to have been resolved quite amicably - a flash in the pan but one that was very worrying for a time.

Once this has been finalised, we turn our attention to camp infrastructure with the equipment that came up with the yaks yesterday. The key issue here being communications as this is where the transceiver will be that covers the upper mountain and the cornerstone of our safety systems. Rather concerningly, this sort of works but sort of at best. Again I don't want to make a big issue out of this as the expedition has been teetering a bit of late! 

I am starting to feel a little unwell from late afternoon on - little bit feverish and a sore throat. I manage to force down a good supper but go to bed pretty much straight after. Hopefully I can sleep this off and be in good shape for tomorrow as I am really keen to get moving.