The foreign climbers who had come here to scale the top of the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, spending thousands of rupees, have faced another shock in the aftermath of the last month’s devastating avalanche.
Having aborted their mission to scale Everest following the deadliest avalanche on April 18 that claimed the lives of 13 Sherpa guides with three still missing, the foreign mountaineers are now facing difficulty getting air tickets at Lukla Airport to get back to Kathmandu and home.
This is due to the large number of foreign climbers who are now preparing to return home after giving up their attempt of Everest expedition.
“We are facing a surge in the number of passengers seeking return air tickets to Kathmandu. They mostly comprise the foreign climbers, the mountain guides and assistants who want to return after cancelling their mountaineering expedition on Everest,” according to airlines agents.
A staffer with the Simrik Air, Lukla said that the foreign climbers who are visibly in a tense mood after having to give up their climbing bid on Everest even chastise the airlines staff without understanding the problem when informed of lack of tickets.
The Lukla town, the gateway to Everest, is full of these climbers waiting for air tickets to return to Kathmandu. Some of them have been waiting for weeks for air tickets.
“We have not been able to issue tickets to a good number of these foreign tourists due to the limited number of flights and also the bad weather,” Phuniru Sherpa, the station manager of Tara Air, Lukla, said.
Sherpa said although every airlines operating flights here has been conducting additional flights in view of the sheer number of climbers who have returned from the Everest Base Camp, the flights are affected due to the weather which becomes bad in the afternoon.
Source: ekantipur.com
Date: 3 May, 2014
