This spring in early Nepal, an unprecedented number of climbers are trying to climb the world’s highest mountain, Everest.

According to the Ministry of Tourism, a total of 466 climbers from 43 groups received permission to climb the Himalayas. Of these, 98 are women and the remaining 368 are men, the ministry in Kathmandu said.

This season, climbers wishing to climb Mount Everest (or Sagarmatha as the locals call it) come from 65 different countries, including Nepal, according to ministry statistics.

More than one in five (96 climbers) from China. Another 89 from the US have been licensed and 40 from India. Similarly, 33 people from Hungary, 21 people from Canada, 18 people from Russia and 15 people from the UK and Nepal were licensed.

The former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Ang Tsering Sherpa, said that the number of climbers who received permission from Nepal could increase significantly, as climbing from the Tibetan side (the northeast ridge route) has been banned since the beginning of the pandemic.

It has been 70 years since man first set foot on the summit of Everest. Sir Edmond Hillary and his local Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgai successfully summited on May 29, 1953.

Since then, about 7,000 local and foreign climbers have successfully climbed the 8,848.86-meter mountain, while more than 300 people have died trying to do so, according to the Nepalese ministry.

In 2022, 323 climbers from 44 teams received permission to climb Everest, said Bigyan Koirala, an official with the ministry’s mountaineering department in Kathmandu.

Source: Himalayan Times