All 50 Uses of
Nepal
in
Into Thin Air
- In March 1996, Outside magazine sent me to Nepal to participate in, and write about, a guided ascent of Mount Everest.†
Chpt Intr.
- Nevertheless, five weeks after I returned from Nepal I delivered a manuscript to Outside, and it was published in the September issue of the magazine.†
Chpt Intr.
- Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I ... stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet.
Chpt 1 *Nepal = a small country high in the Himalayas between India and China
- The Western Cum, pronounced koom, was named by George Leigh Mallory, who first saw it during the initial Everest expedition of 1921 from the Lho La, a high pass on the border between Nepal and Tibet.†
Chpt 1
- Designated Peak XV by surveyors in the field who'd first measured the angle of its rise with a twenty-four-inch theodolite three years earlier, the mountain in question jutted from the spine of the Himalaya in the forbidden kingdom of Nepal.†
Chpt 2
- Demarcating the Nepal-Tibet border, towering more than 12,000 feet above the valleys at its base, Everest looms as a three-sided pyramid of gleaming ice and dark, striated rock.†
Chpt 2
- The first eight expeditions to Everest were British, all of which attempted the mountain from the northern, Tibetan, side-not so much because it presented the most obvious weakness in the peak's formidable defenses but rather because in 1921 the Tibetan government opened its long-closed borders to foreigners, while Nepal remained resolutely off limits.†
Chpt 2
- In 1949, after centuries of inaccessibility, Nepal opened it borders to the outside world, and a year later the new Communist regime in China closed Tibet to foreigners.†
Chpt 2
- In the spring of 1953 a large British team, organized with the righteous zeal and overpowering resources of a military campaign, became the third expedtion to attempt Everest from Nepal.†
Chpt 2
- Tenzing became a national hero throughout India, Nepal, and Tibet, each of which claimed him as one of their own.†
Chpt 2
- A few months before Willie Unsoeld departed for Nepal, I reached the summit of my first mountain-an unspectacular 9,000-foot volcano in the Cascade Range that now sports a chairlift to the top-in the company of my dad, Willie, and Regon.†
Chpt 2
- The government of Nepal recognized that the throngs flocking to Everest created serious problems in terms of safety, aesthetics, and impact to the environment.†
Chpt 3
- In the spring of 1993, on the fortieth anniversary of the first ascent, a record fifteen expeditions, comprising 294 climbers, attempted to scale the peak from the Nepalese side.†
Chpt 3
- Additionally, the government decreed that no more than four expeditions would be allowed on the Nepalese flanks each season.†
Chpt 3
- What the Nepalese ministers didn't take into consideration, however, was that China charged only $15,000 to allow a team of any size to climb the mountain from Tibet and placed no limit on the number of expeditions each season.†
Chpt 3
- The flood of Everesters therefore shifted from Nepal to Tibet, leaving hundreds of Sherpas out of work.†
Chpt 3
- The ensuing hue and cry persuaded Nepal, in the spring of 1996, to abruptly cancel the four-expedition limit.†
Chpt 3
- Judging from the fact that sixteen of the thirty expeditions on Everest last spring were climbing on the Nepalese side of the mountain, the high cost of obtaining a permit doesn't seem to have been a significant deterrent.†
Chpt 3
- By any measure this is a lot of money-it equals the mortgage on my Seattle home-and the quoted price did not include airfare to Nepal or personal equipment, No company' fee was higher-indeed, some of his competitors charged a third as much.†
Chpt 3
- People unfamiliar with the demography of the Himalaya often assume that all Nepalese are Sherpas when in fact there are no more than 20,000 Sherpas in all of Nepal, a nation the size of North Carolina that has some 20 million residents and more than fifty distinct ethnic groups.†
Chpt 4
- People unfamiliar with the demography of the Himalaya often assume that all Nepalese are Sherpas when in fact there are no more than 20,000 Sherpas in all of Nepal, a nation the size of North Carolina that has some 20 million residents and more than fifty distinct ethnic groups.†
Chpt 4
- There are Sherpa villages scattered throughout the Himalaya of eastern Nepal, and sizable Sherpa communities can be found in Sikkim and Darjeeling, India, but the heart of Sherpa country is the Khumbu, a handful of valleys draining the southern slopes of Mount Everest-a small, astonishingly rugged region completely devoid of roads, cars, or wheeled vehicles of any kind.†
Chpt 4
- Because the Kingdom of Nepal kept its borders closed until 1949, the initial Everest reconnaissance, and the next eight expeditions to follow, were forced to approach the mountain from the north, through Tibet, and never passed anywhere near the Khumbu.†
Chpt 4
- Chhongba Sherpa, a wry, thoughtful man who had joined our expedition as Base Camp cook, offered to arrange a meeting with the rimpoche-"the head lama of all Nepal," Chhongba explained, "a very holy man. just yesterday he has finished a long period of silent meditation-for the past three months he has not spoken.†
Chpt 4
- Although idealistic Westerners like Ziemer who work at the Pheriche clinic receive no remuneration and must even pay their own travel expenses to and from Nepal, it is a prestigious posting that attracts highly qualified applicants from around the world.†
Chpt 4
- The latrines were so abhorrent that most people, Nepalese and Westerners alike, evacuated their bowels outside on the open ground, wherever the urge struck.†
Chpt 4
- They had firm plans to join forces and attempt Manaslu-a difficult 26,781-foot peak in central Nepal-immediately after guiding their respective clients up Everest in 1996.†
Chpt 5
- By the time Fischer left for Nepal in the spring of 1996, he'd begun to garner more of the recognition that he thought was his due.†
Chpt 6
- Eighteen days earlier she'd broken into tears when she'd taken me to the plane to Nepal.†
Chpt 7
- From the moment I agreed to go to Nepal my intention was to ascend every bit as high as my unexceptional legs and lungs would carry me.†
Chpt 7
- Tenzing-the same man who would later make the first ascent of Everest with Hillary-had immigrated to Darjeeling from Nepal in 1933 as a seventeen-year-old, hoping to be hired by an expedition departing for the peak that spring under the leadership of an eminent British mountaineer named Eric Shipton.†
Chpt 8
- He flew to Purtabpore, India, but having not received permission from the Nepalese government to fly over Nepal, he sold the airplane for five hundred pounds and traveled overland to Darjeeling, where he learned that he had been denied permission to enter Tibet.†
Chpt 8
- He flew to Purtabpore, India, but having not received permission from the Nepalese government to fly over Nepal, he sold the airplane for five hundred pounds and traveled overland to Darjeeling, where he learned that he had been denied permission to enter Tibet.†
Chpt 8
- From the beginpermit* issued by the Nepalese NE sel were on rung he'd said that both Cathy O'Dowd and Deshun Dey only climbers listed on the official permit-at a cost of slopoo a head-are allowed to ascend above Base Camp.†
Chpt 8
- This rule is strictly enforced, and violators face prohibitive fines and expulsion from Nepal.†
Chpt 8
- Adding insult to injury, before leaving South Africa Woodall had cautioned de Klerk-who is married to an American woman and has dual citizenship-that he would not be allowed on the expedition unless he agreed to use his South African passport to enter Nepal.†
Chpt 8
- He's not even a South African citizen-the guy's a Brit, and he entered Nepal on his British passport.†
Chpt 8
- The national flags of Nepal and South Africa, along with banners from Kodak, Apple Computer, and other sponsors, flew from a pair of tall aluminum flagpoles.†
Chpt 8
- A nonclimber in her mid-twenties who'd just completed a residency in family practice, Hunt had done extensive volunteer medical relief work in the foothills of eastern Nepal, but she had no 46 previous experience in high-altitude medicine.†
Chpt 8
- Although she expressed some ambivalence about the invitation in a letter to Fischer in January, Hunt ultimately accepted the unpaid job and arrived in Nepal at the end of March, eager to contribute to the expedition's success.†
Chpt 8
- The day before departing for Nepal, in one of her first Web postings for NBC Interactive Media, she gushed, All my Personal stuff is packed…… It looks like I'll have as much computer and electronic equipment as I will have climbing gear… Two IBM laptops, a video camera, three 35mm cameras, one Kodak digital camera, two tape recorders, a CD-ROM Player, a Printer, and enough (I hope) solar Panels and batteries to Power the whole project… wouldn't dream of leaving town without an ample…†
Chpt 8
- Less than two weeks before departing for Nepal he had undergone minor throat surgery, leaving his trachea in an extremely sensitive condition.†
Chpt 9
- A number of very accomplished Himalayan mountaineers were in attendance on the Nepalese side of Everest in 1996-veterans such as Hall, Fischer, Breashears, Pete Schoening, Ang Dorje, Mike Groom, and Robert Schauer, an Austrian on the IMAX team.†
Chpt 9
- Lopsang first made a splash in 1993, at the age of twenty, when he was hired to carry loads for a joint Indian-Nepalese Everest team led by an Indian woman, Bachendri Pal, and largely composed of female climbers.†
Chpt 9
- It was determined that Geran Kropp, a young Swede who had ridden a bicycle from Stockholm to Nepal, would make the first attempt, alone, on May 3.†
Chpt 11
- Tenzing Norgay and other eminent Sherpas signed a petition demanding that the government of Nepal conduct an official inquiry of the purported ascent.†
Chpt 11
- Far to the southeast, along the India-Nepal frontier, colossal thunderheads drifted over the malarial swamps of the Terai, illuminating the heavens with surreal bursts of orange and blue lightning.†
Chpt 12
- In 1984, during an expedition to Nepal's Annapur terious disease that had degenerated into a chronic on na Massif, he'd been stricken with a mys.†
Chpt 15
- Leaving their high camp at 27,230 feet as a party of six, the Ladakhis did not get away from their tents until 5:45 A.M.* By midafternoon, still more than a thousand vertical feet below the top, they To avoid confusion, all times quoted in this chapter have been converted to Nepal time, even though the events I describe occurred in Tibet.†
Chpt 18
- Clocks in Tibet are set to reflect the Beijing time zone, which is two hours and fifteen minutes ahead of the Nepal time zone e. g 6:00 A.M. in Nepal is 8:15 in Tibet.†
Chpt 18
Definition:
-
(Nepal) a small country high in the Himalayas between India and China