To the new season on Everest

KATHMANDU: The Seven Summits Foundation in coordination with Nepal Tourism Year 2011 committee will organize a concert at the Mount Everest Base Camp at the height of 5,400 meters above the sea-level on March 23.

According to the organizers, apart from Nepali artists and International artiste John McCune from USA will also perform at the Everest Base Camp for the programme. The initial festival is dedicated to raising awareness of the melting of the Himalayan Glaciers due to Global Warming, kicking off a series of five concerts with the final one in Kathmandu, said Thomas J Sexton, a member of the 7 Summits Foundation.

After two weeks of trekking and performing in the Himalayas, the ‘Save the Himalaya’ festival will conclude with a concert in Kathmandu on April 6.

Led by Ang Chhering Sherpa, who holds the record for climbing the world’s seven highest summit in just 42 days, and in association with the Nepal Tourism Year 2011 committee, the 7 Summits Foundation hopes to use the concert series to focus the attention of the international community on one of the highest destinations on earth, embodying the ‘Voice from the Top of the World’.

While rising sea-levels have been the central focus of the detrimental effects of Global Warming, the melting of our glaciers will have an impact on landlocked nations as well, he said, adding that the melting of the Himalayan glaciers will cause flooding and destruction, affecting the survival and livelihood of the people of the Himalayan region.

Meanwhile, AC Sherpa plans to continue to build awareness of the impact on the Himalayan glaciers by attempting to set a new mountaineering record by climbing Mt Everest three times in one climbing season this summer.

KATHMANDU: A team of civil servants led by Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, Lila Mani Poudel is all set to scale the Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world. They are setting off for mountaineering from the third week of Chaitra.

It was informed at a programme that the mountaineering campaign of the civil servants, as an important programme in connection with the Nepal Tourism Year 2011, will spread a new message in the international sector. The programme was organised at the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation.

The government has allocated Rs 750 million for the campaign which will be of 75 days. Similarly, the Mountaineering Training Institute Development Committee has been providing training and will manage the expedition.

In course of the training, the expedition has successfully scaled the Yala peak of Lamtang.

At the programme, Chief Secretary Madhav Ghimire said the mountaineering will help devise a mechanism on sustainable environment conservation by acquiring information about the effects of climate change in the mountain region.

Similarly, Secretary at the Tourism Ministry, Kishor Thapa said the Ministry will arrange the management for the mountaineering team to reach atop the Everest and return it safely.

Team leader Secretary Poudel said they were all set to climb the Mt Everest to show that the civil servants were also capable to do adventurous job.

Nepal Tourism Year Coordinator Yogendra Shakya said the mountaineering zeal of the employee will add new spirit to the tourism sector.

The mountaineering team comprises Joint Secretary at the Foreign Ministry, Durga Prasad Bhattarai, Joint Secretary at the Tourism Ministry, Laxman Bhattarai, engineer at the same ministry Santa Kumar Maharjan, and Mukti Ram Rijal, Surath Pokhrel, Hari Prasad Guragain, Khim Lal Gautam, Gyanendra Kumar Shrestha, Tulsi Ram Bhandari, Padma Bahadur Bhandari, Bishnu Prasad Poudel, Subir Shrestha, Hari Dhakal and Kumar Giri.

Joseph Dalton Hooker, renowned botanist, close friend of Charles Darwin and global explorer, also produced the earliest Western sketch of a little-known geologic feature called Mount Everest, it emerged this week.

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, where Hooker was director in the late 19th-century, has identified a rough sketch by Hooker of the Himalayan mountain, the highest point on Earth, as one of the first of its kind. A consultation with Hooker experts, including the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), suggests the drawing is the earliest known scientific Western drawing of what locals call Mount Chomolungma. The work dates from 1848, completed while Hooker, aged 30, was conducting a three-year-long research expedition of the Himalayan region. The RGS named Everest in 1856 after George Everest, a former British surveyor-general of India.

"It is always wonderful when we turn up a hidden gem of such historical importance," said Kew's director Stephen Hopper. "To our knowledge there are no other earlier representations of Everest by a European, in which case this discovery could be one of the most important findings in Kew's Archive."

While the RGS has a French map of the relevant Himalayan region dating from the 1730s, it has no pictorial representations of the mountain from this period.

Kew were first alerted to the sketch's importance by documentary filmmaker Peter Donaldson, who has spent several years researching Hooker's life. In 2008, he retraced Hooker's 1848 journey through eastern Nepal and the Tibetan border, which Mr Donaldson claims was the first recreation of its kind. "Hooker's various explorations around the world and on the spot drawings provide a very interesting reference point to see how parts of the eastern Himalayas and elsewhere have changed over the last 160 years," Mr Donaldson said in an email. "Hooker established much of the science underlying current understanding of how plants change with changing climate. This is of great importance in interpreting the past and future effects of climate change."

The garden's archives also contain a watercolour by Walter Hood Fitch, based on the Hooker sketch, which was created in about 1850. While the botanist does not refer directly to the drawing in his journals, he describes a spectacular sunset seen during his four-year expedition. "I have never before or since seen anything which for sublimity, beauty and marvellous effects, could compare with what I gazed on that evening." Everest is marked on Hooker's sketch "very high snows NNW ".

As well as being the first European to collect plants in the Himalayas, Hooker also worked with Darwin to classify plants he had collected in the Galapagos Islands.

Hooker's sketch is currently on display at Kew's Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art until 1 June.