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Posts Tagged ‘Everest Base Camp trek’
As well as having some of the world’s most elevated hot showers and indoor toilets, Everest Base Camp has recently been equipped with 3G Internet. This means that Everest Base Camp trekkers can contact family and friends far more easily than before, keeping them up to date on the progress of their Himalayan treks or Everest summit attempts. The development is part of a more widespread program in Nepal from Ncell, a Nepali telecoms company that is a joint venture between local investors and Nordic company TeliaSonera, to roll out greater phone and internet connectivity across the nation.
Satellite communication: end of an era
Before the installation of the 3G towers at Everest Base Camp, trekkers were required to carry heavy and rather expensive satellite equipment in order to transmit information and images to the wider world – or simply call their families. Some expeditions carried this equipment all the way to the summit, while others carried VHF radios to keep in touch with the base camp. Now trekkers will only need to bring mobile phones to base camp, where they can email, surf, Tweet and more; although it is unclear how far up the mountain this 3G signal will extend and how consistent it will remain across the mountain face in inclement weather.
Ncell chief, Pasi Koistinen, demonstrated the 3G internet’s capabilities by making the world’s highest video call from the base camp. Many of the thousands who reach the base camp each year will gladly follow suit, especially happy that use of the 3G internet will be far cheaper than the old satellite phones.
Concerns such as Dave Hahn’s – whose expedition found the body of legendary British mountaineer George Mallory in 1999, but struggled to send out sufficiently large resolution photos – will be significantly reduced by the towers’ installation. Most Everest Base Camp trekkers or even those attempting the summit don’t have news of such global significance, but simply want to keep family or friends updated on their progress and share the amazing photos they have taken.
Cheapening the experience?
There are some climbers, however, who are less enthusiastic about this news. Their concern is that the ring of mobile phones and the use of Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media services will detract from the experience of reaching Everest Base Camp or climbing to the summit. “It was one of the few places you could go and lose yourself from the world,” says one trek operator, who is still unsure about this change.
Others remain indifferent, with no interest in embracing the technological improvement themselves, but appreciate why other Everest Base Camp trekkers are pleased.
Connectivity across Nepal
While the 3G internet provokes discussion among the trekking and climbing crowd, the Nepali company Ncell has far bigger plans. At present, telecommunication services only cover a third of Nepal’s 28 million people, a situation that Ncell is determined to change. TeliaSonera will spend over $100 million to expand its facilities in Nepal, aiming to roll out mobile coverage to 90% of the country’s population. The people living in the Khumbu Valley benefit as much as the Everest Base Camp trekkers from the 3G towers at base camp, and this is only the beginning.
Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run a classic Everest Base Camp trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.
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If you’re planning to make an Everest Base Camp trek, chances are you know some of the local mythology about the mountain – almost everyone has heard of the Yeti, or “Abominable Snowman”, and no one would be surprised to know that Everest was considered a god’s abode, or a god in its own right, in old mythologies. Yet there are many other traditions concerning the highest mountains in the world, and knowing some of them might make your Everest Base Camp trek an even richer experience.
Tibetan Mythology
In Tibetan mythology, mountain gods have immense power and influence over humankind and even the other deities. This is because the mountains themselves are such an influence on the Tibetan world. Visually they are massive, dominating the horizon and, close up, the sky; and the weather systems surrounding them are equally difficult to ignore. The clouds, wind, thunder, hail, snow and rain are intense. The weather’s changeable nature is reflected in the mountains’ imagery in ritual, which over time changed from animal images to human-like figures including the ones below.
The Five Sisters of Longevity
The myth of the Five Sisters of Longevity is popular in the Everest region and each sister is identified with particular mountains in that area. The greatest sister is Bkra-shis-tshe-ringma, typically depicted as a young and beautiful woman, riding a white lion and holding a sacred arrow used for taking auspices (favourable signs). Tied to the end of the arrow are dice made of white conch and a mirror. She wears white silk, a cloak of peacock feathers and a white scarf around her head. Her sisters are Mting-gi-zhal-bzang-m, typically a green goddess riding a wild horse and holding a magical mirror; Mi-g’yu-blo-bzang-ma, the yellow goddess, giver of grain and riding a golden tiger; Cod-pan-mgrin-bzang-ma, the red goddess of wealth, who rides a red doe and holds a plate full of treasures; and Gtaddkar-vgro-bzang-ma, another green goddess, who rides a dragon and holds a sacred arrow in her hand, and possesses dominion over the animals. These five sisters offer cleverness and wisdom to mankind, and all live on the peak of Everest. According to the myth, five icy lakes lie at Everest’s foot – each coloured to correspond to the goddesses. Sadly, you’re unlikely to encounter these mythical lakes on an Everest Base Camp trek, but the mountain’s size and splendour might well convince you that goddesses dwell at its heights.
The Heavenly Rope
Ancient Tibetans living near the particularly high mountains of the country believed that a rope or step connected the mountaintops to heaven. This originated not only in the height of the mountains, reaching far into the sky, but from weather-related illusions – rainbows, for instance – that might look like bridges or connections between realms. Originally, deities that moved between the heavens and the earth were given animal form, such as yaks and wild horses; there was a myth of the horse and the wild horse who met in the air and descended to the land. Gradually these animals became depicted as human figures. When Tibetan historians came to writing the history of the royal family, they connected it to these figures, so that the first generation of Tibetan kings descended from the heavens to the sacred mountains. If you aspire to turn your Everest Base Camp trek into the beginning of an attempt at the summit, you might be following, in reverse, the steps of Tibet’s first kings.
Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run a classic Everest Base Camp trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.
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Get an Everest Base Camp Trek In Before the Mountain Melts
An Everest Base Camp trek is, for many, the challenge of a lifetime and the culmination of much time spent in training and preparation. Scientists maintain however, that Everest is changing – better get that climb in quick before the mountain melts away…
The Mighty Mountain
The world’s highest mountain, Everest stands tall at a recorded height of 8,848 metres, though those doing the Everest Base Camp trek will only reach an altitude of around 5,000 metres. There are suggestions that with the shifting of the tectonic plates on which the Himalayas lie, the entire mountain range is being pushed upwards at a rate of between 4 and 10 centimetres a year, making the mountain even mightier with every year that goes by. The first expeditions attempting to summit Everest all had one common denominator – George Mallory. He was a British climber who was determined to climb the mountain simply “because it’s there.” Mallory sadly never returned from his third attempt to climb Everest, and the first successful trip to the summit was made by Hillary and Norgay in 1953. However, relics from Mallory’s attempts remain today, and are in fact proving to be very useful to scientists studying the way the mountain is changing.
Everest on Candid Camera
Many people preparing for an Everest Base Camp trek look at photos remaining from Mallory’s climbs for inspiration and motivation. However, they have now proved useful for other purposes too, with scientists using them to compare the mountain today with the mountain many years ago. One photo taken in 1921 clearly shows a significantly wide S-shaped mass of ice sweeping down the mountain side. This year, the Asia Society sent mountaineer David Breashears to exactly the same spot where Mallory’s photo was taken in order to gauge the extent of ice loss. The society was however, unprepared for the dramatic results they found whilst comparing the two photos.
Changing Faces of the Mountain
Comparisons between Mallory’s and Breashears’ pictures show that the once prominent ice mass has dwindled significantly in the 89 years between photographs, suggesting that Everest’s main Rongbuk Glacier is shrinking over time. The Himalaya mountain range is home to an incredibly large sub-polar ice reserve, and water from the glaciers on the mountain sides act as a supply for many of the region’s largest rivers such as the Ganges, the Yangtze, the Mekong and several more, upon which many depend for their livelihood. The current melting rate shown by these photographs suggests that by the middle of the present century, the Himalayan glaciers may well have shrunk to a point that will severely affect the flow into the rivers. The difference between the two photographs is certainly very noticeable, suggesting that if you were to do an Everest Base Camp trek today, it could possibly look very different to one you would do at the end of the century.
Though the mountain is certainly not going anywhere and will be waiting for any who want to take part in an Everest Base Camp trek for many, many years to come, it seems that its appearance may well change much sooner should the current melting rate of the glaciers continue.
Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the classic trek to Everest Base Camp for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.
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