Mount Everest is a great equaliser. It doesn’t care how deep your pockets are or which country you came from. One usually pays for a mistake with life here, as it happened recently during the “traffic jam’’ at the roof of the world. It was the second such mishap, if it can be called that, in the past seven years but in reality it was triggered by the same old deadly cocktail of unchecked greed, misplaced pride and lack of respect for the world’s highest peak.
Eleven people from India, United States, Nepal and England died during a single fortnight in May 2019. It was obvious neither the commercial mountaineering companies nor the Nepal Government had bothered to learn the lesson from the equally brutal tragedy in the spring of 2012, when 12 people had perished in the same region, on the same route and almost in the same fashion.
What is particularly galling is that neither the people stuck in the `traffic jam’ of 2019 nor the travel companies which brought them here bothered to look back and learn from the incidents of 2012 before arriving in Nepal. In this age of super-quick dissemination of information on digital highways, it turned out to be a deadly lapse. A few clicks of the mouse could have saved some lives.
Few people realise the dangers hiding behind the blinding beauty of the Himalayas’ higher reaches. This is the typical rain shadow area where sudden drop in oxygen can hit your brain quicker than an approaching bullet train. Leading to high altitude sickness, this single factor has been the cause of several deaths in the past 100 years.
Sagarmatha, as the Nepalis call Everest in reverence, is an unforgiving peak. To scale it require top-notch skills coupled with proper training and some climbing experience. Now come to think of it, a large number of Everest seekers for the past few decades have been rank amateurs. Some of them may not have climbed a hill in their life.
Why is the Everest climbing increasingly looking more like an obstacle to overcome or a race to win at any cost, rather than an act of deep passion which requires purity of spirit and real love of the mountains? Perhaps the dominant trend is the sign of the age we live in. Be that as it may, the ground has become sufficiently ripe for milking unsuspecting consumers, and unbeknownst to them silent forces act upon them from different corners. First comes the cash strapped Nepal Government for whom Everest has become an essential source of foreign revenue. Each climber to Everest has to part with 11,000 US dollars even before he or she sets foot on Namche Bazaar, the place from where the journey to the Earth’s third axis starts.
And then, the ubiquitous travel companies offering “complete Everest package” to the potential climbers; no questions asked. A simple medical certificate is all that is required to secure the permit.
That it was lust for dollars which propelled the private companies, often headed by accomplished mountaineers, to corner as many potential customers as possible with little regard for their safety became clear in the 90s itself. A whopping 65,000 US dollars per person was the going rate then. It was Jon Krakauer who blew the lid, through his remarkable book Into Thin Air, off the noxious arrangements between the travel companies and the Everest junkies who were only too willing to be ushered hand-held to the summit of the world’s highest peak. Mind you that was two decades ago, and since then lot of water must have passed under the bridge. Into Thin Air, incidentally, is also Krakauer’s riveting account of the disaster of 1996 when a sudden rogue storm in the lap of Mt. Everest killed five top mountaineers of the day.