2020 threatens to become a black year for expedition and trekking operators in Nepal. First they lost the entire spring season because of the corona lockdown, now the same threatens to happen in fall. Just a few days ago, the first operators like Imagine Nepal had announced eight-thousander expeditions for early September. Mingma Gyalje Sherpa’s…
After all, there is still a small spark of hope for an at least modest fall season in the Himalayas. According to the Nepalese Ministry of Tourism, it is planning to allow foreign and domestic flights again from 1 August – subject to safety requirements. Due to the corona lockdown, all flights to and in…
Suddenly the whole world is talking about dexamethasone – a drug that high-altitude climbers and trekking tourists traveling in the Himalayas or the Karakoram have known for a long time. According to the participating scientists, a British study showed that the death rate of COVID-19 patients on artificial respiration decreased by about one third when…
One of the most popular politicians in the region around Mount Everest is dead. Nim Dorje Sherpa, head of the Khumbu Pasanglhamu rural municipality died of intestinal cancer at the age of only 39 years in his home village of Lukla. Nim Dorje had fought against the disease for ten months, in vain in the…
The curves speak a clear language. According to John Hopkins University in the USA, which registers all officially reported coronavirus cases worldwide, the pandemic has not yet peaked in Nepal. Since the beginning of May, the curve has been rising continuously – around 5,000 infections have been registered so far, 16 COVID-19 deaths. The number…
The “sprinter”, as he was once called, will return to Mount Everest. In spring 2022 Marc Batard wants to climb the highest mountain on earth without bottled oxygen – at the age of 70. If he succeeds, Marc would then most likely be by far the oldest climber on the roof of the world without…
“We are opening tourism, because these three to four months are important for the people associated with tourism. Otherwise more joblessness will occur at these places,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan surprisingly announced earlier this week. The former country’s cricket superstar, who has been head of government since August 2018, specifically mentioned the northern provinces…
“I was deeply touched. Never before I had felt such a feeling of happiness,” French climber Maurice Herzog later wrote about that moment on 3 June 1950, when he reached the 8,091-meter-high summit of Annapurna I with his compatriot Louis Lachenal – it was the first ascent of an eight-thousander. Both climbed without bottled oxygen…
