Everest, Mount (China and Nepal); Mount Everest Expedition (1922); Mountaineering expeditions--Everest, Mount (China and Nepal)
I am afraid also that most of us had only one real idea at the time, and
that was to get out of the Rongbuk Valley. However, during our wait for
the transport the annual fête of the Rongbuk Monastery occurred. There
was a great pilgrimage to the monastery to receive the blessing of the
Lama and to witness the annual dances. Most of our party went down to
see dances, and Noel especially to cinematograph the whole ceremony,
dances as well as religious ceremonies. I have not done justice up to
this point to Noel’s work. He was quite indefatigable from the start,
and had lost no opportunity during our march up, not only of taking many
pictures of the country and Expedition, both with his ordinary camera
and with his cinema camera, but of studying Tibetan life as well. He had
in the Rongbuk Valley pitched his developing tents near the only
available clear water at the moment, and had there been untiring in
developing his cinema photographs. He had made two expeditions to the
head of the East Rongbuk Glacier, and had even taken his cameras and his
cinema outfit on to the North Col itself where he remained for no less
than four days—a most remarkable _tour de force_. On the last occasion
he had accompanied the evacuation party, and had been actually taking
pictures of the start of the last attempt to get to the North Col and to
climb Everest. Of course, his performances with the camera are entirely
unprecedented. The amount of work he carried out was prodigious, and the
enthusiasm he displayed under the most trying conditions of wind and
weather was quite wonderful. We now feel that we can produce a real
representation of our life and of life in Tibet in a manner in which it
has never hitherto been brought before people’s eyes, and this gives a
reality to the whole Expedition which I hope will make all those who are
interested in mountain exploration understand the wonderful performances
and the great difficulties under which the climbing members of this
Expedition and the transport officers laboured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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