Tibet 2016 - Everest base camp
This continues my record of my trip to Tibet in 2016.
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| Alpine choughs over the Himalayas |
We left the home stay in Basrum, in order to be at Rongbuk monastery in time to be able to photograph sunrise on Everest. While I have obtained some good photos of Everest, none of the ones at dawn were adequate, mostly due to my messing up the HDR sequences of photos I took.
Rongbuk monastery claims to be the highest one in the world. I am not sure of this as the one in the northeast of Ladakh claims to be at about 5500m. Some of the party presented offerings at the monastery, and received blessings.
Then on to base camp. En-route and on arrival, there were magnificent views of the Himalayas, including six over 8000m, and 40 over 7000m. The weather was glorious. At the camp, there were large numbers of corvidae. With information and subsequent research, I found these were alpine choughs - the yellow billed chough. Although they are called alpine choughs, they have two sub-species, one with a range covering southern Europe through to Iran, while the other is found in the Himalayas. The bird found in the UK is the red-billed chough, also known as a chough, or a Cornish chough, is mainly found in the Himalayas, thus ensuring maximum confusion.
The other photographic opportunity was watching a toddler, wielding a broom the same size as herself. She was learning household jobs by trying to sweep Everest base camp - a Sisyphean task.
More photos can be found in this gallery.