Instant Everest, Inc
Nepali Times ईspecial 30 May - 5 June 2025 #1263
Dear Nepali Times readers,
In case you had not noticed, May 29 was Everest Day and it was marked with the usual hoo-hah in Nepal where it is conveniently forgotten that only the south side of the world’s highest mountain is in Nepal — the east, north and west faces are all in China.
But that did not prevent Prime Minister Oli from making it mandatory for everyone (not just in Nepal, but all over the world) to henceforth call the mountain Sagarmatha. Hence the Sagarmatha Sambad, where the Chinese delegation pointedly referred to the event as the “Qomolangma Dialogue”.
But a mountain by any other name smells just as sweet, so no sooner was the Spring Climbing season over this weekend, than the Dept of Mountaineering and Monetisation was in the counting house counting all its money. Apparently we raked in a cool $6.2 million just on climbing fees this spring, and therefore Nepal has no intention of decongesting the mountain.
As someone who did some rock climbing in his youth, and has now become something of a social climber myself, I cannot fathom why anyone would want to risk life and limb for scenery one could easily behold from the Kathmandu-Bhadrapur flight.
But we don’t begrudge those who want to break records for the most summits (Ang Rita, 31 times), the youngest youngster to get to the top (13-year-old Jordan Romero), the first to don labeda suruwal on the summit, or the first person to attend to a call of nature without oxygen on the summit of Mt Everest.
But this year, it was all about the Xenon Guyz, the four British Army ex-commandos who sniffed the rare gas and broke the record to become the fastest to get from Heathrow to the top of Everest and back in one week. That record was quickly challenged by a US-based Ukrainian tycoon who did the JFK-Sagarmatha-JFK roundtrip in four days.
As Nepali Times reports this week, Spring 2025 on Everest was all about velocity (The Everest Industry, Need for Speed by Vishad Raj Onta, page 4-5). We also learn that the government is trying to increase revenue from the mountaineering industry by declaring six more peaks to be 8,000ers even though the UIAA has not recognised this move. It is also adding the monsoon climbing season for anyone out there who is not bothered by leeches on the march-in. As it turned out, the southwest monsoon has arrived two weeks ahead of schedule in Nepal.
The established narrative is that Nepal doesn’t have the financial resources to invest in development and infrastructure. However, as Shristi Karki found out, as in all previous years this year also the three three layers of government left one-third of its development budget unspent. Find out why: Understanding Nepal’s Underspending, page 1.
The big question before the budget last week was whether a cash-strapped government would raise taxes on EVs. Fearing such a hike, 1,400 battery-powered vehicles were imported just in April, but as it turned out Finance Minister Bishnu Poudel decided to not raise the levy. This was good news, but as Sonia Awale argues in her Editorial (Nepal Needs New Green Energy Policy, page 2), even better would have been if the FinMin had reduced taxes on electric public transport and battery two-wheelers to reduce petroleum imports and improve air quality.
All the ‘development’ that does take place is often mafia-driven and illegal, as Archana Darji finds out in her investigative report from Suryabinayak in the hill above Bhaktapur. A real estate developer has been clearing a community forest and displacing residents to ‘plot’ a new housing project (Plotting To Plunder, page 6-7).
Hari Prasad Adhikari Sacré was born in Kaski and adopted by Spanish parents. He is back in Nepal trying to get a Non-resident Nepali citizenship, and relates how despite laws, he has faced obstacles every step of the way from the bureaucracy (Born in Nepal, and Treated Like a Foreigner, page 9).
Women members of a community forest in Nawalpur have shown by example how to reduce the risk of wildfires by harvesting dry fuel from the undergrowth and turning it into compost to fertilise farms and increase crop yield. Ahead of World Environment Day on June 5, the FAO representative in Nepal Ken Shimizu presents this as a model to be replicated (Community Reduces Wildfire Risk, Increases Wellbeing, page 10-11).
Enjoy the monsoon.
Kunda Dixit