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Tara Puja in Namche
Sun, March 28, 1999 — Namche Bazaar, Nepal


CLICK TO HEAR THE CALL:

Good morning Mountain Zone. This is Pete Athans, Everest Millennium. We're coming at you from Namche Bazaar, live and rowdy from the Himalayan Hotel here, with bowls of steaming porridge kind of going by, and I'm staring at a huge bottle of Teacher's Highland Cream scotch whiskey. I'm kind of getting a bead on that for when the expedition's over.

What we had yesterday was what's called a "puja," or blessing ceremony. This one in particular's called a "tara puja" or "long-life puja," and we had to hike about two and a half hours; well, up about 2500 feet. We nearly lost the NBC crew, which was maybe surreptitiously what we were trying to do. I think they're going to hold it against us today and try and keep the cameras within about two inches of our faces and get all that nasty trail dirt projected to everybody out there in the real world.

But this morning, everything looks great. It's a beautiful day out here, the peaks of Kongde and Thamserku are kind of poking out of the clouds. The weather is fantastic and really brings to mind how lucky we really feel and how privileged we feel we are to be here.

Our ceremony yesterday lasted about an hour and a half, and included a lot of cymbal-clanging and drum-thumping and of course, the lama reading many many prayers for us to bring us good auspices and hopefully to bring about the good wishes of the spirits that reside not only on the top of Everest, but on the sacred peak of Khumbu which is known as Khumbu Yuh Lah and the bride of Khumbu Yuh Lah which is known as Thamserku.

So we hope everyone is well out there. Thank you for being part of our lives today, and we will be obviously coming back at you, probably tonight or tomorrow. Until then, take care. Have a great day, and we'll talk to you soon. This is Pete out.

—Pete Athans, Expedition Leader

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