Everest and COVID-19: climbers and operators need to come clean

May 4, 2021 Opinion and advice alan arnette, commercial mountaineering, everest, explorersweb, global health, kenton cool, nepal, nirmal purja 11 Comments

We know that climbers and Sherpas have been flown out of Everest Base Camp with COVID-19, but we don’t know the extent of the outbreak. All climbers and operators need to take a hard look at 2021 and decide if the positives of their impact outweigh the negatives.

When Prince Philip went tiger shooting in Nepal

April 14, 2021 History chitwan national park, history of nepal, nepal, tourism, wildlife 7 Comments

Today’s post comes with apologies to the 110,994 people who wrote to the BBC last week (a national record, apparently), complaining about the dawn to dusk coverage of Prince Philip across all their TV channels, after the Queen’s consort and

Is the first winter ascent of K2 a turning point for Sherpa mountaineers?

January 27, 2021 History 8000m peaks, ali sadpara, angtharkay, bottled oxygen, denis urubko, first ascents, gyalzen norbu sherpa, k2, nepal, nirmal purja, pakistan, pasang dawa lama, seven summits treks, sherpas 19 Comments

It’s not very often that the ascent of an 8,000m peak makes international news headlines, but earlier this month something rather special happened when a team of 10 Nepali climbers stood on the summit of K2.

What does Mount Everest look like from space?

July 15, 2020 Opinion and advice everest, george mallory, international space station, island peak, lhotse, mountain photography, mountains from space, nepal, nuptse, tibet 3 Comments

If you follow the Everest Today (@EverestToday) account on Twitter, you may be used to seeing the occasional photo of mountains taken from the International Space Station. Mountains look very different from above, and views from the International Space Station are not always recognisable. But this one of Everest is so distinctive that I had to annotate it and share it with you.

Why did a Chinese team climb Everest during the coronavirus pandemic?

June 3, 2020 Opinion and advice china, everest, global health, nepal, records, tibet, yarla shampo expeditions 8 Comments

Last week a team of Chinese surveyors climbed Everest and were among only a handful of people to climb it during the coronavirus pandemic. But aren’t we all supposed to be in lockdown? Not all of us, it turns out. I will try to explain.

Can you really see Mount Everest from Kathmandu?

May 20, 2020 Opinion and advice everest, ganesh himal, global health, himalayas, kathmandu, langtang lirung, nepal, nepali times 17 Comments

One of the side effects of coronavirus lockdown that many people have been talking about is the clarity of the air. Less traffic means less pollution. Nowhere illustrates this better than Nepal’s capital Kathmandu. Last week the Nepali Times posted a photo that purported to show a view of Everest from the city. Could it be true?

Learning about the Manang Valley in the early days of the Annapurna Circuit

May 6, 2020 Reviews and tributes annapurna, annapurna circuit, great himalaya trail, himalayas, mountain environment, mountain films, nepal, responsible tourism, trekking 2 Comments

Now that the pubs are all closed, I’ve been spending Saturday nights searching for mountain gems on YouTube. Here’s one. In the Shadow of Annapurna offers a glimpse into an earlier age in Nepal, when things were rapidly changing but many of the old ways remained.

Revised edition of The Baruntse Adventure available from all good e-bookstores

April 18, 2020 My books and writing amazon, baruntse, chewang nima sherpa, edmund hillary, mark dickson, mountain literature, nepal, the baruntse adventure, travel diaries, travel writing 0 Comment

A quick book update. I’m in the process of publishing revised editions of the Footsteps on the Mountain Travel Diaries. The revised digital edition of The Baruntse Adventure is available now at a bargain price from the main online bookstores.

Kangchenjunga Base Camps Trek: the videos

March 18, 2020 Trip reports 8000m peaks, drohmo ri, forest fires, himalayas, jannu, kangchenjunga, mountain environment, mountain films, nepal, trekking 3 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a great series on the Great Himalaya Trail. This inspired me to return to my old footage of the last time I was in Nepal. It’s now two years since Edita and I trekked the Kangchenjunga Base Camps circuit, and I still hadn’t completed editing my video footage from that trek. Well, now I have, and it’s been great fun going back and reliving it.

Keep safe from coronavirus with namaste, the ‘Nepali handshake’

March 11, 2020 Good causes cultural heritage, global health, hinduism, nepal, teahouse trekking 3 Comments

There is no shortage of advice at the moment about how to protect yourself from COVID-19, a.k.a. the coronavirus. Since many of you are regular travellers, I’m going to chip in with some simple advice of my own that will be familiar to anyone who has trekked a lot in Nepal.

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