Quomolongma

The list of geological features in this world that we expect every man, woman and child on this planet to have heard of is quite short: the Sahara Desert, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Grand Canyon and for good measure we'll add the Amazon to that list. Mt. Everest, or Qomolongma as the Tibetans say, is also on that list, as the tallest mountain in the world. I saw it.

I recall as a child looking at a 3-D topographic map of the world, running my fingers of the tiny orange and yellow bumps that denoted mountain ranges in the US and Europe. On the other side of the map was a block of white, the only block of white on the whole map really, which represented the Himalayas, and everyone knew the name of the biggest bump. Mount Everest, and the entire Himalayas have existed in my mind as something I know exists, but had always seemed more like a scientific fact than a real place you could actually see. Yet if you're willing to ride along the bumpy, dusty, unpaved roads over the mountain passes of central Tibet, it just sits there, waiting to be seen.

Approached from Tibet (which is much easier than approaching from Nepal), the mountain lies at the end of a long canyon, at the far end of a large nature preserve, at the far end of the world. Not noticeably higher than other mountains in the region, nor vastly prettier (they're all snow capped mountains, so what more do you want?), Mount Everest somehow awes the viewer, commanding any onlooker to contemplate his or her place in the world. Perhaps knowing it was the tallest mountain influenced my thinking, but thousands of years before I had arrived the Tibetans had given it a name meaning "Goddess of the Earth", so I don't think I'm the first person to stand at a loss for words for this mountain.

I could tell you about the monastery at the foot of the great hill, or the tents we stayed in that night, but compared to staring at one of the things on 'the list', staring at a thing completely stationary for hours on end, none of the other things are all that memorable. The only movement is in the clouds, which blow on and off the summit at an alarming rage. When we summited a mountain pass where we should have been able to see the mountain from, but we greeted with heavy cloud cover, my heart sank. Then, after 2 hours driving closer and closer, we rounded a bend to discover the great mound staring back at us, surrounded by baby blue sky. The rest of the day involved the mountain playing peek-a-boo with us until, after an exhausting mile and a half stroll, darkness claimed the mountain back.

If all my pictures look pretty much the same, its because they are. I've found when I'm unable to capture the beauty or awe of a location in a single picture, I'll try to make up for it with a greater quantity of pictures, which explains why I have about 70 near identical pictures of this great pile of rocks.

I guess the most surprising thing I found was how easy it was to get there, to the big white bump on the map. In some ways it feels like checking off something on a to do list (perhaps because this was indeed an item they came up with in the movie "The Bucket List"). No matter how or why you get there, it's an impressive mountain to see.

At a close, I wanted to mention that my Red Sox were just eliminated from the playoffs in game 7 by the Tampa Bay Rays. I'd been coming in early, listening to the games online, but today when my parents called on Skype, offering to point their laptop at the TV so I could watch the game, I was thrilled and privileged to see at least one baseball game this year live. Chatting with my parents as the game went on (lamenting that Pedroia didn't bunt in the 8th), it was as close an experience as you can have to watching the game with family while still being separated by most of the Northern Hemisphere. The Sox lost and their season is done, but at least they went out fighting.