Reflections
I’m about to take a three-month sabbatical to deal with webmaster matters and do a bit of travelling, but before going offline I need to make a correction. In April, and for that matter whenever I’ve written about visiting the world’s highest mountain, I’ve repeated the common story that the Tibetan and Sherpa name for Mount Everest – Chomolungma – means “Goddess Mother of the Earth”. I’ve now learned that’s not quite true.
Continue reading “Naming a Goddess – The many guises of Mount Everest”
Tourists are told that Tibet’s Rongbuk (Rongphu) monastery is the highest in the world, but it isn’t. That honour goes to the slightly higher monastery at Dirapuk, facing Mount Kailash far to the west.(*) Nonetheless, at 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) above sea level, Rongbuk is magnificently located on the northern approach to the world’s highest mountain, known in the West as Mount Everest and in Tibet as Qomolongma, “Goddess Mother of the Earth”. A visit can be humbling, in more ways than one.
The shady courtyard of Sera Monastery hums with energy as dozens of maroon-robed monks pair off in philosophical debate. One defends a proposition calmly, seated cross-legged on the ground. The other stands; challenging animatedly, concluding each argument with a dramatic sweep of the arms and a stamp of a foot. It looks like some sort of exotic scholastic Tai Chi, and perhaps in some ways it is. But it also has lessons to offer on critical thinking in a world awash with digitally-proliferated information misinformation, disinformation, opinion and downright lies.
A geographer friend has been encouraging me for a long time to try making story-maps, so herewith my first attempt – to begin, click here.
Merci Mélanie!
A majestic mountain called Kailash towers above the high point of the Tibetan plateau, a three-day drive west from the capital of Lhasa. Until mid-20th Century it had been seen by only a handful of Westerners, but it has always been sacred to millions of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Tibetan Bonpo. Today, hundreds visit between June and September, most to attempt what one lyrical author has called “the greatest and hardest of all earthly pilgrimages” – a 52-kilometre “kora” or circumambulation of the mountain at altitudes ranging from 4,600 metres (15,000 feet) to over 5.600 metres (18,500) where the available oxygen is only half that at sea level.