Panorama Photo

This solitary gompa is hidden somewhere below the Manaslu, locally also called Kang Punggen, far away from the common routes. I wanted to reach it stealthily in the early morning (see several morning panoramas from Shyala and the vicinity), but when I realized that it was not a short undertaking, I went back to my lodge to have breakfast with my sherpa, and to try again with him.
In the long plain whose end is seen here, only some old yak skull, or some little lake hosting a handful of geese, emerged from the snow of the night snowstorm, before the gompa appeared, clung high on the rocks. We ate a little soup with a monk, asking him if we could meet the lama. "The lama is on the way, but we do not precisely know where".
"We do not know where": one has to go as far as the Punggen Gompa, in our days where everything and everybody is tracked, to to hear again there precious words.
And with these words in mind we went down to the valley, meeting the same skulls, the same geese, but no lama. We picked the heavy rucksacks that we had hidden behind a boulder, and enjoying again their company we reached Samagaun: among the villages of the high valley, the one where poverty is more evident. In spite of this, on the walls did not lack some manifesto of the film "Manaslu, Berg der Seelen", by Hans Kammerlander, which in those days was being presented at the Mountain Film Festival in Trento. (Incidentally, Trento is my home town)
So: for me only yak skulls, no Berg der Seelen, this was the thought of the day. Life can be so harsh at times!