Our traveler arrives at Rongbuk Monastery just around dinner time. The traveler's choices for eating in this locale are not extensive. There is the monastery guesthouse which serves yak milk based dishes, and there is the new government hotel which serves crude oil based dishes. Both cases are not at all what you would consider delicious. Then again, who ever came to Everest for a culinary experience? Weren't our traveler.
But ignorant of both places' specialties, our traveler unfortunately heads towards the new government hotel--a large, multi-tiered concrete travesty which looks more out of place than a Brazilian swimsuit model would. After ordering, the traveler and his companions survey the scene: mostly there are Chinese tourists and perhaps a few Europeans--but all of them are comatose with oxygen tubes sticking out their noses while they sleep. Apparently the elevation does get to some people. Rongbuk Monastery is something above 17,000 ft. high.
As time passes though, the traveler notices that the elevation does not only affect those unprepared tourists, it also seems to affect the staff of the restaurant who move so slowly and are so reluctant to do anything, he wonders if he will get his food before the next month. But the wait for food is made even more agonizing by the sudden appearance of a beam of sun. Shooting down from the northern end of the valley, it plays about the valley slopes. As the hours tick by, the sun slowly creeps its way further up the valley towards the mountain. Our traveler who had been one minute fearing that he would never even get a glimpse of Everest, is ecstatic.
The clouds slowly begin to draw back from Everest. First only a little portion of the left shoulder is visible, but suddenly in a majestically ponderous movement, almost all the clouds withdraw from the mountain, leaving the world’s tallest mountain shining in the sun. Our traveler had worried perhaps that the view of the mountain, if he ever got it, would be anti-climactic—he needn’t have.
