Published On:Monday, 20 October 2014
Posted by Celebrate Life Style information Blog
Nepal tragedy echoes across borders
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| A family member of an avalanche victim outside a Kathmandu morgue. (Reuters) |
- Hikers from 6 countries drawn by accessibility of Annapurna trekking circuit
Kathmandu, Oct. 20: In an incense-filled prayer room inside a Buddhist monastery here, more than a dozen lamas prayed beside the body of Ang Dorje Sherpa, a 36-year-old porter who died last Tuesday alongside two Slovakian clients when an avalanche engulfed their group at the base of the Dhaulagiri mountain.
At a small brick synagogue in the Nepali capital, a handful of friends prayed for Nadav Shoham, an Israeli man of about 30 who was overcome by blasting wind and blinding snow that day as he tried to fight his way down from the Thorong La pass to the nearest town.
And in the quiet garden of a guesthouse in this city’s backpackers district, Grant Tomlinson, of Vancouver, British Columbia, waited for the body of his wife, Jan Rooks, 55, a nurse, whom he saw swept under a wall of snow and debris.
“It was like she was erased,” he said.
Six days after a catastrophic storm bore down on several trekking routes in Nepal’s central Himalayan region, trapping scores of hikers, a spokesman for Nepal’s home minister said today that there was “no one left to rescue” from the area and that workers had turned to recovering the bodies of the dead.
He said that eight people were still missing, trapped under at least 35 feet of snow. Local officials raised the death toll to 40 people, half of whom were Nepali.
People from at least six other countries — Canada, India, Israel, Japan, Poland and Slovakia — lost their lives.
The bodies of two of the three men from Bengal who had gone missing have been found, the family of one of the trekkers said.
The trekkers were drawn by the pull of the Himalayas, and the relative accessibility of the treks in and around the Annapurna Circuit, which attracted young people with little money to spend on a vacation, and some with gear more appropriate for a comfortable hike than for a journey through a snowstorm.
While climbers pay up to $100,000 to tour companies to climb Mount Everest, and their Sherpa guides earn $3,000 to $5,000 a season, some of the basic packages for the Annapurna Circuit cost as little as a few hundred dollars a person. On budget tours, porters can make as little as 1,000 Nepali rupees a day, or about $10, and are often less equipped to handle harsh weather. October is meant to offer the best and clearest trekking weather, but the climate has become less predictable recently.
“Seven people died — and we’re only one story,” said Paul Cech, 54, a computer animator from Vancouver.
Tamar Ariel, a 25-year-old Israeli pilot, came to Nepal after a summer of working as a navigator on a fighter jet during the 50-day conflict in Gaza. The daughter of a farmer, she hailed from a kibbutz of avocado groves and modest, red-roofed homes. The Israeli police visited her family last Thursday to deliver the news that she had died in the snowstorm.
Scott Copeland, her uncle, speaking on the phone from southern Israel, described Ariel as a deeply religious woman, and a “boundary breaker”.
Chani Lifshitz, the wife of the rabbi of Chabad House in Katmandu, had been coordinating with the Israeli embassy in Nepal. She said that many of the Israeli travellers who come to Nepal do so after three years of mandatory military service, sometimes involving combat and the deaths of friends on the battlefield. “After three years, they’re looking for a place that’s far and free,” she said. - The Telegraph.
Kathmandu, Oct. 20: In an incense-filled prayer room inside a Buddhist monastery here, more than a dozen lamas prayed beside the body of Ang Dorje Sherpa, a 36-year-old porter who died last Tuesday alongside two Slovakian clients when an avalanche engulfed their group at the base of the Dhaulagiri mountain.
At a small brick synagogue in the Nepali capital, a handful of friends prayed for Nadav Shoham, an Israeli man of about 30 who was overcome by blasting wind and blinding snow that day as he tried to fight his way down from the Thorong La pass to the nearest town.
And in the quiet garden of a guesthouse in this city’s backpackers district, Grant Tomlinson, of Vancouver, British Columbia, waited for the body of his wife, Jan Rooks, 55, a nurse, whom he saw swept under a wall of snow and debris.
“It was like she was erased,” he said.
Six days after a catastrophic storm bore down on several trekking routes in Nepal’s central Himalayan region, trapping scores of hikers, a spokesman for Nepal’s home minister said today that there was “no one left to rescue” from the area and that workers had turned to recovering the bodies of the dead.
He said that eight people were still missing, trapped under at least 35 feet of snow. Local officials raised the death toll to 40 people, half of whom were Nepali.
People from at least six other countries — Canada, India, Israel, Japan, Poland and Slovakia — lost their lives.
The bodies of two of the three men from Bengal who had gone missing have been found, the family of one of the trekkers said.
The trekkers were drawn by the pull of the Himalayas, and the relative accessibility of the treks in and around the Annapurna Circuit, which attracted young people with little money to spend on a vacation, and some with gear more appropriate for a comfortable hike than for a journey through a snowstorm.
While climbers pay up to $100,000 to tour companies to climb Mount Everest, and their Sherpa guides earn $3,000 to $5,000 a season, some of the basic packages for the Annapurna Circuit cost as little as a few hundred dollars a person. On budget tours, porters can make as little as 1,000 Nepali rupees a day, or about $10, and are often less equipped to handle harsh weather. October is meant to offer the best and clearest trekking weather, but the climate has become less predictable recently.
“Seven people died — and we’re only one story,” said Paul Cech, 54, a computer animator from Vancouver.
Tamar Ariel, a 25-year-old Israeli pilot, came to Nepal after a summer of working as a navigator on a fighter jet during the 50-day conflict in Gaza. The daughter of a farmer, she hailed from a kibbutz of avocado groves and modest, red-roofed homes. The Israeli police visited her family last Thursday to deliver the news that she had died in the snowstorm.
Scott Copeland, her uncle, speaking on the phone from southern Israel, described Ariel as a deeply religious woman, and a “boundary breaker”.
Chani Lifshitz, the wife of the rabbi of Chabad House in Katmandu, had been coordinating with the Israeli embassy in Nepal. She said that many of the Israeli travellers who come to Nepal do so after three years of mandatory military service, sometimes involving combat and the deaths of friends on the battlefield. “After three years, they’re looking for a place that’s far and free,” she said. - The Telegraph.
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