Happy Lhosar 2012 (Tibetan New Year)
Happy Lhosar to everybody! Today a new Tibetan New Year has started in the Himalayas.
Lho in Tibetan language means ‘year’ and Sar means ‘new’. Lhosar, also known as Tibetan New Year is celebrated mainly by Tibetans for fifteen days. The main celebrations take place on the 1st 3 days. On the 1st day, a drink called changkol is made from chhang (similar to beer). The 2nd day of Lhosar is known as King’s Losar (gyalpo losar). Lhosar is traditionally preceded by the five day practice of Vajrakilaya. It often falls on the same day as the Chinese New Year (sometimes with one day or occasionally with one lunar month difference).
Lhosar is culturally more related to Tsagaan Sar in Mongolia than the Chinese New Year festival.
Although Lhosar is mainly celebrated by Tibetans worldwide, it is also celebrated by some Yolmo, Sherpa, Tamang, Bhutia communities, like in Nepal.
Lhosar celebrations predates Buddhism in Tibet and can be traced back to the pre-Buddhist Bön period. However, Losar later evolved into an annual Buddhist festival which is believed to have originated during the reign of Pude Gungyal, the ninth King of Tibet.
Garbage well delivered in Kathmandu
Some time has passed, so several updates to give you!
The second team indeed summited May 23rd, while sweeping many Kgs of mainly old rope, tents and oxygen cylinders. In total 1800kg has been brought down to the BC, apart from the 2 dead bodies which were brought to and picked up at camp 2.
Of this pile of garbage, 1000kg of disposable rubbish has been left in Namche where it will be processed. The remaining 800kg has been flown back to Kathmandu last week.
Interesting detail… May 29 the Hillary-Tenzing marathon has been held; all the way from BC to Namche. Several runners did show their valuable support to this clean up expedition by taking a special designed bag with them, loaded with 2 kg of ‘our’ garbage. Two of our Sherpas (Pasang C and Kurma) even joined these running heroes, showing that they are real athletes… They were actually the only two who had ‘ran’ from 8848m all the way to Namche 
! So from here, we would like to thank all ‘garbage pickers’ for their prestige!
The coming weeks art students will make some interesting pieces and creatures of these materials and exhibit the result in a local gallery. We’ll keep you updated where you have to go!
Also, 100 pictures of the expedition and rubbish will be shown at an exhibition soon from now. The exact dates and location… you still get it from us.
Namgyal in National Geographic!!!
This month, National Geographic has printed a special edition focusing on water problems seen all over the world. One of Namgyals stunning pictures taken from the summit of Mt Everest (overlooking all main glaciers in the Khumbu and beyond) has been chosen to support the text of one of their articles. The article titled ‘The Big Melt’ points at the fact glaciers in the Himalaya feed Asians greatest rivers, serving as freshwater lifelines for 2 billion of people. However, ice and snow started to decrease rapidly…
First Sherpa team summited!
The first Sherpa team summited Mount Everest yesterday, 22 May 2010. Among the summiters was Namgyal Sherpa, project leader of the clean up expedition, setting his total at 8 times.
The second Sherpa team is heading to the summit today, after which both teams will go up again to retrieve an enormous quanitity of oxygen bottles and old ropes.
More details to come soon!
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Eveline Wessels
