AUTHENTIC Italian cappuccino, draft beer, German bakes, Swiss confectionary and a Finnish sauna at 3,300 metres above sea level? No, I am not in the Swiss or Austrian Alps where these can be hoisted up on aerial ropeways or cable cars. I am at a village in Nepal, and the only mode of access to it is an arduous eight-hour climb through treacherous boulder-strewn slopes. The nearest city—Kathmandu—is at least a week’s trek away. That is Namche Bazaar for you, a jewel of a village nestling in a depression in the high ranges of the Himalaya, watched over by a string of snow-clad eminences, not excluding the grandest of all, Mount Everest.
Namche Bazaar is a pit stop en route to Everest Base Camp (EBC, 5,380 metres), the launch pad from which intrepid mountaineers attempt to reach the summit. At 8,848 m, Mt Everest, named after George Everest, a Director of the Survey of India, was identified as the tallest peak in the world in 1865. In the early 20th century, seven attempts were made to scale this peak from the Tibetan side, but all ended in failure. After the Second World War, Nepal opened up the southern route. The first few to attempt the feat through this route failed. Ultimately, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay succeeded in reaching the summit in 1953. Since then, Mt Everest has been trampled over by thousands of human feet, and its crevasses have been stuffed with abandoned mountaineering debris, not to mention the frozen bodies of those who did not make it back safely. Periodically, the Sherpa community organises “cleanup” expeditions to bring back some of the trash, but the bodies are left alone.
http://www.frontline.in/other/travel/a-trek-to-everest/article9511412.ece
