We awoke to a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains!
Our first stop of the day was Sagarmatha National Park. Near the entrance is this incredible statue of the great Nepali hero Tenzing Norgay.
Our sherpas preparing the hole to plant our Peace Tree. The location is spectacular, with a clear view of Mt Everest behind on clear days!
A big thank you to Sagarmatha National Park Chief Conservation Officer, Bhumiraj Upadhyay, for all his help in facilitating our event and making the planting of the peace tree possible.
We were honored that Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon Concept man, Bikram Pandey, attended our event and spoke a few words about the connection between peace and the importance of preserving the natural environment.
A big thank you to all the staff of Sagarmatha National Park for embracing the Peace Run and this new Peace Tree.
Our Peace Tree is very small right now, but will grow into a beautiful Rhododendron Barbatum, which grow well in this location. The Rhododendron is the national flower of Nepal, and also the favourite food of the endangered native Musk Deer, which live in the Everest Highlands.
We all had the opportunity to plant our own Rhododendron saplings; here is Mira planting hers!
The spectacular views continued as we walked up 2 hours to Khumjung. This was a good acclimatization hike for the team and took us to our first of two school visits today.
After a long hike up, the village of Khumjung came into view.
We were really happy to be able to visit Khumjung Secondary School, also known as Hillary School. It was the first of many schools set up by Sir Edmund Hillary to help improve the education of the Sherpa people. In the early 60's Sir Ed asked a Sherpa if there was anything he could do for the Sherpa people. The Sherpa replied, "Our children have eyes but they are blind and cannot see. We would like you to open their eyes by building a school in their village." This touched Sir Ed's heart so he went about building the first school in Khumjung. He went on to build numerous schools, hospitals and health clinics across the Solukumbu region in the foothills of Everest.
The school is in a beautiful setting, surrounded by mountains.
Laxmi Magar introduces herself and asks the children how many can ride a bike.
Mira Rai leads the students on a run with the Peace Torch.
The principal, Ngawang Dorjee Baing (Rai) holding the Peace Torch as he receives the certificate of appreciation on behalf of the school.
We've made it to 3775 metres. There are numerous signs announcing the altitude along the trail.
Mira can't help herself from jumping into the fields to do a bit of hand ploughing!
On the way back down to Namche we met this man with his family who was walking home to Khumjung after summitting Everest for the 13th time.
Running in to Shree Himalaya Basic School in Namche Bazaar where we got a great reception from the students.
The students were very well behaved and enthusiastically joined in learning the World Harmony Run song with actions.
They were amazing in guessing the teams countries, including Serbia, Czech Republic, Poland and Scotland. Their English was also excellent.
They aslo had handy lanyards to store the Peace Run cards that we gave them.
It was almost impossible to slow Mira down enough to take part in the slow motion race skit.
The principal, Bkumar Bishowkarma receives artwork by Sri Chinmoy.
Beautiful clear skies gave us a stunning view over Namche.
We have been deeply inspired by all the projects that the Himalayan Trust has done and continues to do for the Everest region. From schools, hospitals, clean water supply, nature preservation and many more. Thanks to the General Manager of the trust, Alex Hillary, we were invited to meet them at their hotel and congratulate them with a small presentation.
We were very fortunate to present Peter Hillary, chairperson of the Himalayan Trust, with our Torch Bearer Award on behalf of the trust.
Presenting an artwork by Sri Chinmoy named "World Harmony".
Peter Hillary, Yvonne Hillary and son Alex Hillary carrying on their father and grandfather, Sir Edmund Hillary's vision of giving back to the Nepalese people. Here is a family full of compassion, service, self-giving and great achievement. We felt immensely honored to able to acknowledge, in a small way, the huge difference they are making to thousands of peoples lives in this most precious and unique part of our world family.
