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Four of the
world’s six tallest peaks-mount Everest, Lhotse,
Makalu and Cho-Oyo-rise here crowning the
towering ridges that straddle this forbidding
Himalayan country.
Glaciers, emerging from the soaring snow slopes,
wind through the harsh, windswept terrains
below. It is bleak and un forgiving land but
stupendously beautiful. There are snow peaks
every which way u look, sweeping up majestically
against the clear azure sky. And there is
Everest, of course dark mysterious, reluctantly
revealing its mighty rock-face as one ascends
the kala patthar hill. surly there can be no
trek as rewarding as on to the Everest
viewpoints the world’s highest peak is barely10
km/6 miles from kala attar-the 5,545,/18,180ft
rocky knoll with an unbelievable 360-degree
panoramic views of skyscraping mountains and
vast glaciers. The glaciers, terminating in
boulders streams, down streams as the streams
widen in to rivers, alpine scrub gives way to
forest of birch, pine and rhododendron. Soon as
elevation drops the first villages appear.
Village peopled by the Sherpa’s, the sturdy
Buddhist hill people of tertian stock who are in
dispensable to must Himalayan climbing
expeditions.
Picturesque collections of shingle-roofed houses
set amidst terraced fields, the villages
preserve a way of life that has changed only
little over the Indian subcontinent, the farms
are still worked by men and animals .the biggest
of the Sherpa settlements is of course namchee
bazaar, now overrun by hotels and tourist shops
but still retaining a Shangri-La air about it.
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