KATHMANDU: Government declared 2020 as the Visit Nepal Year with the objective of boosting tourism in Nepal. Everest, the highest snow-capped mountain in the world is the major tourist attraction in the country.

However, thanks to the impact of the climate change, the Everest may not be as appealing due to increasing rate of melting snow. Garbage piled up in the Everest pose another biggest threat to its survival.

Not only for the mountain climbers, around 50 percent of tourists visit Nepal to have the glance of the snow-capped Himalayas, according to a data maintained by Nepal Tourism Board (NTB).

However, these Himalayas may not retain the same alluring look thanks to snow melting as an impact of the global warming, according to PK Sherpa, a tourism entrepreneur and a mountain climber.

Sherpa has been running a campaign to clean the Everest since 2010. As of now he collected six dead bodies as well as a huge amount of garbage scattered in around the Everest, according to PK.

Garbage types in the Everest

Climbers are the main source of pollution in the Everest. Since everybody is conscious to save his/her life, they throw away anything that is a burden. Besides, some climbers die in terms of the climb. Garbage since the first human successful attempt to conquer the Everest in 1953 remain piled up in the Everest. Beside dead bodies, garbage in the Everest include food packages, can bins, oxygen cylinders, EP gas, tents among others.

 

Everest is getting ugly

Even as the Everest still casts a majestic spell from a distance it is getting less charming to the climbers. Layers of garbage piled up in the Everest is getting visible due to melting snow. Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee is working to clean the Everest. However, its activities are focused on the base camp only.

It is of urgent need to clean camp-2, camp-3 and camp-4 of the Everest, according to Sherpa. “Around 15 to 20 tons of the garbage remain piled up on the Everest above its camp-2. Even a regular cleaning will take some 10 years to rid Everest of the garbage,” says Sherpa.

In his first Everest cleaning campaign PK and his team comprising 20 members had collected five bodies and 18 tons of the garbage. Nepal Mountaineering Association in 2011 had collected over three ton garbage. It was at that time that Sherpa had collected one dead body from the Everest.

Sherpa who is after the Everest cleaning campaign plans to construct a museum out of the garbage materials collected from the Everest.

Cost incurred in scaling the Everest

The cost for climbing any Himalayas including the Everest is different for Nepali and foreign nationals. For Nepalese nationals, the cost comes to around Rs. 1,500,000 to Nrs. 5,00,000. If people climb the Everest, the cost shared by a person becomes low.

That is, if one climbs the Everest in a group of 10, per head cost comes to around Rs.10,0000 to Rs. 1,50,000.