Mount Everest, the Reconnaissance, 1921Howard-Bury, Charles
History
Mount Everest, the Reconnaissance, 1921
Howard-Bury, Charles
Everest, Mount (China and Nepal); Mount Everest Expedition (1921)
clay images of Buddha in his different forms and postures. These were
stamped by a very well cut brass die, which the monks told me had been
made at Shigatse. In a side room was a huge prayer wheel some 12 feet
high and 5 feet to 6 feet in diameter. It was covered over with painted
leather inscribed with the usual Om Mani Padme Hum (Hail, jewel of the
lotus flower). They told us the inside was also filled with prayers, and
that it contained one and a half million of these, so that each time the
wheel was turned a million and a half prayers were said for the person
who turned it. After each complete revolution it rings a bell. We were
allowed to turn it several times, so that I hope the many million
prayers sent up may benefit us. After leaving the monastery, the path
rose steeply and the river came down in a series of waterfalls. Above us
were masses of pink and mauve rhododendrons, flowering cherries,
viburnum, berberis, roses and other delightful shrubs. Soon afterwards,
at the entrance to the Lingmatang plain, we crossed the river and rode
up a rocky spur formed of great boulders that had some time or another
fallen down and blocked up the valley, forming a lake some 2 miles long,
but this lake no longer existed, and there was only a flat grassy plain
grazed over by yaks and ponies. On the top of the spur was the Donka
Monastery in a grand situation, commanding beautiful views up and down
the valley. I had hoped to see my friend the Geshe Lama or Geshe
Rimpoche, as he is sometimes known, with whom I had lunched last year at
the hot springs at Kambu, but unfortunately he was away at Lhasa. He is
a man of very great learning and held in high veneration throughout
these valleys.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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