22/06/2022
Rongbuk Monastery is the highest Buddhist monastery in the world – at 16,434 feet above sea level. It’s located at the foothills of the Himalayas a few kilometers from Everest Base Camp on the north side of Mount Everest. Most early Mount Everest expeditions in the 1920s stopped off at this sacred place. On April 28, 1924, a British Mount Everest expedition joined by George Mallory arrived at the monastery where the expedition members received the blessings from a lama. However, it’s said the murals of the monastery were a bad omen for the team: one of the paintings depicted a white man killed by a demon. Mallory along with his climbing partner, Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, disappeared somewhere near the top of Everest. Mallory's body was found on Everest by the American mountaineer Conrad Anker in 1999, or 75 years after he vanished on the slopes of Everest. Whether he and his friend reached the summit remains a subject of heated debate to this day.
