Footsteps on the Mountain
Nepal’s flagship tourism initiative Visit Nepal 2020 got off to a flying start when 20 yeti statues were removed by tourism officials because they didn’t look anything like yetis. But was this fair and does anyone know what a yeti looks like anyway?
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A few days ago, a reader sent me the following video of a man climbing up a steep bank of snow, reaching the top and seeing two summits beyond. The video was a bit of an eye-opener for me, and solved a mystery that has been bugging me for several years.
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Last week was one of those weeks when a mountaineering story is so big that it makes it into the popular press. On the face of it, it was a straightforward story of someone smashing a record to smithereens. But if you dig a little deeper, there is another side to it.
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Ecuador has some impressive volcanic craters. Some, such as Cotopaxi and Tungurahua – both of which I’m going to talk about later – take a bit of effort to get to. But first, a more relaxing interlude. Not all volcanoes
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Queues of slow moving traffic, people who don’t know how to drive, human faeces by the side of the road – are we talking about Everest again? No, it’s the North Coast 500, a magnificent road trip in north-west Scotland which I once pedalled round.
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What to do when you spend an evening answering interview questions for a journalist, only for them not to be published? Of course, it’s obvious: publish them yourself on your own blog. So here is the world’s first ever interview with Mark Horrell.
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The problems which occurred on Everest this year are nothing new, but they have now reached such a degree that it’s time for operators who value their reputation and for those who dream of climbing Everest to take a principled stand.
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If you’ve been following my adventures on a bike in Scotland and Ecuador, you will know that cycle touring is an acquired taste that I’m still struggling to acquire. By contrast, I love hiking and I was recently given a good lesson why.
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I’ve recently been reading In Ethiopia With a Mule, about a trek across – you guessed it – Ethiopia, in the company of a mule, by the famously brave travel writer Dervla Murphy. She is widely admired for her intrepid travelling style, but does this come at a price?
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I was lucky to live and work for a year in Rome, where the highest peaks of the Apennines were accessible within a couple of hours. It was a hill walker’s paradise, with a feast of mountains of great variety,
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