Mountaineering as a sport is about fairness, honesty, and humility born of risk. It is not about taking advantage of helplessness and poverty.
In the winter of 19 78,1
Climbing ethics presently limits itself to matters of sportsmanship and technique. But being a better mountaineer demands somewhat more than this.
Thousands of mountaineers from all over the world come
Himal takes leave of the debate on Dor Bahadur Bista's book Fatalism and Development (Orient Longman, New Delhi 1991) with two
items. One is an excerpt from a
Tibetan Buddhism is enjoying growing popularity in the West and in Southeast Asia. But as the religious empire grows, followers are asking more difficult questions of the dharma as well
A Reuters report on a recent IFAD announcement regarding the rural poor in the developing countries once again rakes up the question of what to believe and what not to
How big is the problem of littering on Chomolongma?
How big is the problem of littering on Chomolongma? It depends on one's viewpoint. To a mountaineer, litter on
Bhutan strictly controls access to its mountains, but that is because the people want it so. In the battle between sport and spiritual belief, the latter wins for the moment.
"Taking into consideration the pressure on the environment" of upper Khumbu, the Nepali Ministry of Tourism announced in July that effective the Autumn 1922 climbing season, each mountaineering
During the second British expedition to Chomolongma in 1922, George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce used bottled oxygen for the very first time. The four steel cylinders and the supporting frame
As Gurungs, Tamangs, Magars, Rais and Limbus become active in Himalayan mountaineering, they will, in a manner of speaking, be going back to their roots. For as Gurkhas, the non-
Mountaineering has not even begun to live up to its economic promise in the Himalaya. Decades of publicity about difficult climbs by elite mountaineers has kept 'holiday climbers'
Writer Marcus Dam left Darjeeling when he was 15 "and sick of the place". In Calcutta, however, distance made the heart grow fonder. He returned recently and noted
