TOURIST ATTRACTION

The day holds great importance for Nepal’s mountain tourism as Mt Everest attracts climbers and mountaineers from across the globe. However, Mount Everest’s climbing industry has become hugely controversial. With rising popularity of the climb and as Mt Everest beckons, frequent “traffic jams” have been reported on the routes. This is because climbers spend too much time in the death zone (at around 8,000 m or 26,000 ft), waiting for their chance to reach the summit. But more people mean more pollution, particularly near the summit, where there are no toilet facilities. To reduce their load in the arduous climb, climbers  often discard unwanted items all along the mountain.

Additionally, the Sherpa people have been exploited by climbers, and their traditional way of life has been disrupted by foreign climbers. “They (foreigners and mountaineers) bring money and jobs. But it creates conflict for the Sherpa people,”  a Sherpa community leader said. Sherpa guides are faced with some of the highest death rates in any field of employment, for comparatively little pay.

“Everest is no longer a wilderness experience” mountaineer Graham Hoyland has said. It is a McDonald’ s experience. While the booming tourism created employment and better service, a series of environmental issues have now started to surface as well.” The two standard routes, the North East Ridge and the South East Ridge, are not only dangerously crowded but also disgustingly polluted, with garbage leaking out of the glaciers and pyramids of human excrement filled in the camps,” climber Mark Jenkins wrote in National Geographic.

Most disturbingly, because many climbers have died along the way, and their bodies are impossible to retrieve, climbers must frequently walk past corpses as they make their way up the mountain. According to official statistics, over 4,000 mountaineers have successfully reached the summit of Mt. Everest since 1953 and nearly 300 have perished whose bodies are still preserved in deep snow and ice. With improved weather forecasting technology and mountaineering experiences, commercial expeditions to Mt Everest have also mushroomed in recent years in both Tibet and Nepal. Moreover, in the 1990s, international guides began to pioneer commercial trips to Mt Everest, and the mountain’s popularity soared.

In 2021, Nepal’s Tourism Ministry issued a record 408 permits to Everest climbers, the highest in history. Last year, the number dropped to 365, blaming it on the Russia-Ukraine war. But climate change and unseasonal snowfall may also have a lot to do with the lower numbers. The summit window is a brief two weeks, usually 15-25 May. If it snows during this period, the climbing season is impacted. Last year, the amount of snowfall that was witnessed in December occurred in mid-April. This year too, there was heavy snowfall. 

This unseasonal snow leads to incidents of avalanches and outburst of glaciers. In fact, the move to shift Everest base camp is a point in hand. Scientists say the Khumbu glacier on which Everest base  camp is located, is melting and thinning rapidly because of global warming. In June last year, Nepal’s tourism ministry announced plans to move the camp but had to shelve the idea in the face of opposition from the Sherpa community and other mountaineering operators. They said the move was impractical and that there was no viable alternative location. For local logistics companies and the government of Nepal, Everest is big business. The country’s Tourism Ministry reportedly collected 5.2 million dollars in 2018 as permit fee. Nepal charges 11,000 dollars from foreign climbers to take permits for Mt. Everest. However, the expenses range between 40,000 dollars and 90,000 dollars and the cost of an expedition rises further when the weather is not favourable as the climbing season lasts for only two weeks in a year.

The Sherpa community is mainly dependent on mountaineering and expeditions. In fact, it is they who take care of the logistics. One can say the industry is built on their backs. They work together each spring to prepare the route, fix ropes and ladders, stock each camp with essentials like tents, stoves, bottled oxygen and food, and then patiently coax their foreign guests up to the summit. Being better suited to the mountains, and the low atmospheric pressure, Sherpas are well- suited for expeditions. Climbers need them not just as guides but also to carry oxygen and other safety gear on the last leg of the summit path.