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cleo
Social climber
wherever you go, there you are
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Thanks from those photos of the marine response - nice to see Jan
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Nice to see those machines doing works for something good!
Thanks Jan:-)
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steveA
Trad climber
Wolfeboro, NH
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John Porter just received word that there has been a new aftershock which has further damaged the Kathmandu runway. The shipment of aid from the UK
will have to go thru India, rather than directly to Nepal, which obviously complicates this effort.
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Joron
Trad climber
Hoodland, Oregon
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I recently learned that Nima Sherpa, longtime friend and sirdar on our last four expeditions, is safe but living in a tent in Kathmandu. For many years Nima has also led treks with Tom Carter of Moon Expeditions. The past ten years their porters have come from the Tamang Village of Gran in the Langtang region. Tom learned that the village lacked adequate water supply so was asked by porters to assist. So, Tom raised the money and with Nima supervising the project, the village was able to install a new water system. Tom’s video of the project is a nice documentary of life in Nepal and the spirit and strength of the people. And a testament to what a difference one person can make.
Gran was 90% flattened in the earthquake with six hundred now homeless.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Nepal Sherpas refuse to rebuild Everest climbing route destroyed by earthquake
Bad weather from melting ice and monsoon rains will leave too little time, say Sherpas, who will lose from cancellation of Everest climbing season
KATHMANDU, NEPAL—Sherpas in Nepal have refused to rebuild the approach route to the south side of Mount Everest, which was destroyed by an earthquake-triggered avalanche more than one week ago, a decision which will likely end this year’s climbing season.
Gyanendra Shrestha, an official at Nepal’s Mountaineering Department, said the Sherpas informed the office on Monday that they were not going to rebuild the route through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall.
It would be the second consecutive year that the climbing season has been called off because of deaths on the world’s highest peak. The climbing season was cancelled last year after an avalanche in April that killed 16 Sherpa and Nepali porters.
Mountaineering teams have until the end of the month to attempt to climb the peak, but without the route fixed it is not be possible for them to make their climbs. The Sherpas play a crucial role by bringing the ladders, ropes and equipment needed to clear the trail.
Kapindra Rai of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, which governs the “Icefall Doctors,” as the Sherpa guides who prepare the approach ahead of the actual mountaineers are called, said there was not much time left in the season before it starts to get warmer and melting ice and monsoon rains bring bad weather.
“It is just not possible to rebuild the route in time for climbers to attempt to scale the peak,” Rai said, although a formal decision has not been made yet.
Climbers and Sherpas attempting to reach the summit from the north face of the mountain in Tibet have already packed their gear and left after Chinese authorities closed all climbing for the spring season.
The Sherpas are paid daily wages but will also lose the big bonuses they generally receive from the teams after successful climbs to the peak. sites in Kathmandu.
Meanwhile, the Nepalese government is asking foreign search-and-rescue teams to leave, now that the likelihood of finding survivors buried by last month’s earthquake has largely passed.
“We have already asked (foreign rescue teams) to go home,” said Laxmi Prasad Dhakal, a Home Ministry spokesman. Noting that roughly half the 4,000 rescuers had already left, “I think all the rescuers will go to their respective countries by Friday,” he added.
There seems almost no chance that anyone alive is still trapped amid the rubble from the quake, which struck just before noon April 25.
On Sunday, though, three survivors were found in the Sindhupalchok district, an especially hard-hit and largely rural area north of Kathmandu.
The official death toll now exceeds 7,300.
Dr. Ian Norton, head of the World Health Organization’s program of foreign medical teams, praised the government’s announcement, which he said would free up airport facilities and other resources.
“More is not better at this point,” Norton said. “If you’re not contributing, you need to make way for those who are.”
Norton said the thousands of rescuers had saved a total of 16 people in the aftermath of the quake, and that about 50 foreign medical teams comprising nearly 10,000 people had saved hundreds of lives.
After the Haiti earthquake in 2010, nearly 2,000 rescuers saved 13 people, but nearly 30,000 Haitians died because of a lack of proper medical care, Norton said.
“I’m not saying rescue teams are bad, but there needs to be a balance,” Norton said. “This announcement by the Nepali government is completely appropriate.”
Dhakal explained that many rescue teams are refusing to take part in the task of recovering dead bodies from the still-towering piles of rubble in some parts of Kathmandu, “so their relevance is now over.”
With files from The New York Times
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/05/04/nepal-sherpas-refuse-to-rebuild-everest-climbing-route-destroyed-by-earthquake.html
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 4, 2015 - 07:08pm PT
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That's a wonderful video Joron. It really shows the essence of life in a Tamang village. The sad thing about the Tamangs is that they used to be quite prosperous but their forests in the valleys north of Kathmandu were cut down to build the Rana palaces in the city and then they were slowly forced up the mountain sides into the less fertile land.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Thank you, Jan
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Joron
Trad climber
Hoodland, Oregon
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Jan, glad you liked the video. For me, it brought back so many memories of Nepal. Your insights on everything Nepali is greatly appreciated.
Also, received this letter written by a Canadian couple living in Nepal:
This is an incredible letter. Please read it. When the Nepal gov't controls the allocation of relief money and volunteers from around the world, I fear first, for immense bungling and secondly for a mis-allocation of funds, a lining of pockets, by the "have" political families of Nepal.
The world media is awash in images of death and devastation in Nepal. It’s an oddly schizophrenic experience to be ‘watching’ the current crisis from the dual perspectives of participant and observer — both on the ground and over the Internet. That’s life in a disaster zone in the Information Age.
We live in Dhobighat, a relatively new neighbourhood of Kathmandu, and our street is tiny but always busy: an overgrown, badly-paved footpath travelled every day by noisy schoolchildren, motorcycles, vegetable carts, honking taxis, young women arm in arm, gleefully reckless children on bicycles, and old people out for a walk because their daughters remind them that it’s good for them. It’s a middle-class neighbourhood, congested and chatty, and at sundown everybody goes to the dhobi — the communal well after which the area is named — to gossip and watch the boys play a little football, and to fill up their water containers for the night.
We live here because we work at the local international school, teaching the kids of ex-pat families and local folk who want an international education for their children. It’s a nice school, and our students are great — creative, thoughtful young people who have seen something of the world and who are building the skills (we hope) to act on their plans for a better world. It’s an immediate community of more than six hundred people, and all us survived the quake — the students and their immediate families, workers and support staff, teachers and all.
Dhobighat is a mess right now, but we know we’ve been very lucky. Houses have collapsed. A small child was killed nearby. We’re worried about our students, of course; many of them have been sleeping in the streets or in parks since the earthquake hit Saturday, and they’re all far too young to deal with this emotionally. But we’re getting something organized at the school for those who can make it in, and online for those who have Internet but can’t travel. People in Dhobighat have lost much. Some have lost everything. But this is a relatively wealthy and well-built part of town. Most people in our neighbourhood survived. We’ve already started cleaning up.
It’s a different story out in the countryside, and in the poorer parts of town. Many of our friends’ villages were devastated. Others are just … gone, wiped out, their families with them.
There are no words to describe this. The dhobi is full of people today — they’ve been sleeping there, under tarpaulins — but nobody’s talking much. Everyone knows everyone, which means everyone knows where everyone else’s family was when the quake struck — the parents, the little nieces and nephews, the old aunties and uncles, the friends, their villages, their farms. Everyone knows, so there’s no need to ask and not much to say. Nepal deserves better. These are hardworking, capable people who are probably more stoic than is good for them. Their suffering was caused not by the earth shifting but by the constant, grinding movement of resources away from those who have not, toward those who already have.The children mostly seem as riotous as ever, kicking old soccer balls around.
Most of the people who died were already living in desperate poverty. Their homes were ancient and picturesque because they couldn’t afford to build newer, safer ones. All Nepalis know how dangerous those old buildings are; they talk about it all the time. These close-knit families watch their grown children leave Nepal by the thousands, every year, to work in dangerous, underpaid jobs abroad so that they can send money back to Nepal to build better homes. It’s never enough.
Some other time, I’ll write about the many acts of generosity, friendliness, solidarity and resolute cheerfulness that we see here every day, even now. I am moved more than I can say by the uncomplaining courage and dignity of my neighbours and the people of Nepal. The man at little shop — who lost everything and whose name I don’t even know — asking me if my daughter was okay. My little friend Felix, age five, telling me pointedly that he’d like to help with those dishes — but not until I put my helmet on for protection. The kids camped in the field next door, sharing their rice with a street dog. The women laughing as they lurch toward a makeshift laundry line, staggering under the weight of rain-soaked bedding.
But right now all I can think is this: Nepal deserves better. These are hardworking, capable people who are probably more stoic than is good for them. Their suffering was caused not by the earth shifting but by the constant, grinding movement of resources away from those who have not, toward those who already have.
An event of this magnitude does things to your head. Here at our house everybody’s coping, but nobody’s finishing sentences. We’re moving slowly and having a difficult time staying focused. Questions get asked, nobody answers and no one notices. Decisions are made and we forget to act on them.
It all feels strangely familiar. There are terrible forces at work here — and I’m not talking about earthquakes. Since Saturday I have received an embarrassing number of concerned emails, from our friends all over the world, and from many people I’ve never even met, and they’re all worried and sad, and they all want to know what they can do to help. Sometimes people are cynical about that sort of thing; the phrase ‘disaster porn’ has been floating around town, and we all recognize that ugly phenomenon when we see it.
But this is different. People should want to help out, and they do. Our empathy — the thing that drives us to communicate, to reach out to one another and be part of another’s experience — is what our overgrown frontal lobes are all about. It’s why we have social media in the first place.
For the many good people who have something to spare and who want to help, my best advice is to first look around and find some locally-based organization with roots in the community, here in Nepal. Be as sure as you can be that they’ll use the money here on the ground, first to provide emergency services and then to rebuild — and to make it safer this time. I’ve heard of people pledging support for a family for a year, during the rebuilding. That seems like a good idea to me.
In the longer term, what we can all do is stop getting caught up in systems that leave us disempowered and smother our better instincts. We can elect governments that will ensure a more equitable world, in which countries like Nepal are not impoverished by unjust economic structures. We can demand change.
The problem here isn’t earthquakes. It’s poverty. And that isn’t really news.
Renee Comesotti is from Vancouver. She and her partner, Brad Waugh, work at the Lincoln School in Kathmandu; she teaches literature and he’s the secondary principal. They’ve taught abroad for nearly fourteen years.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, joron... thank you for sharing... some of us, can't do anything, but at least we can pray...
long time back, when i was learning various languages, though never got to finish, i remember learning more about the nepalese folks, and i loved looking at the few stories that i found, from folks that knew them...
when you and jan, share, and the other, as to the folks they have met, during travels, and living there:
i can surely see how my heart always leaned towards them... and all these years...
i was so very sad to have seen this happened to them... am still adding my prayers, it sure won't bring the families back, but it can help seeds to grow, for the changes that they need...
to all that can... prayers as you keep up the good long hard work...
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Bump for the suffering children.
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Sobering, even with the best building standards, what would have stood in that slide?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 6, 2015 - 05:03pm PT
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That is a very moving story. I had seen the names in the news but now I feel like I know them.
Here's a totally different type of article especially for Fritz since he is interested in the Mustang area. It turns out the quake diverted some of the Kali Gandaki river due to crevasses opened up in the soil after the earthquake.
https://waterwedoing.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/a-peculiar-case-arises/
In the Kathmandu Valley by contrast, people noted that the water in some of their wells had risen three feet the month before the quake while nearby villages reported the appearance of new springs. Long term consequences to the hydrology of Nepal can only be speculated at this time.
https://waterwedoing.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/wrung-mountains-changed-hydrology/
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Jan: Thanks for sharing the post about river-related earthquake damage in Jomsom. I spent two nights there in 2008 at the start & end of our Mustang trek.
It appears that the Nepal earthquake damage was far more severe to the east of Mustang. So far the only report my Nepal friends have shared from Mustang, is one post that a friend had survived the eathquake.
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feralfae
Boulder climber
in the midst of a metaphysical mystery
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Jan,
Have the Chinese people moved in with a lot of aid? Much of the stuff we are trying to get through to those who need it, is probably stuff being made for western trade at factories in China. Sleeping bags, tents. Is there international coordination of relief efforts going on through Oxfam or AFSC or other NGO groups?
Oh, I must say this today in memory of Doug, who would point it out if he were still typing away: we need better smuggling routes so we can shift goods during emergencies while avoiding the red tape and yellow paper of bureaucrats and politicians. Humans are so wonderfully humanitarian on their own, but seem to become less so when in positions of political power. Today is the three year, three month anniversary of Doug's escape.
So, in Doug's memory, one of the most generous people I have ever known, I just want to encourage everyone to do their best to help out this tribe of our human family, who are so severely traumatized and suffering. They need to know we hold them in our hearts even if we cannot be there with them.
namaste,
fae
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Topic Author's Reply - May 7, 2015 - 12:15pm PT
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The Chinese are very active in Nepal. They are in competition with India among other things. They had a search and rescue team there the next morning. They have just sent 500 workers and heavy equipment to open up the road from Kathmandu to the Tibetan border which will facilitate relief supplies coming overland. They gave free hotels, meals and flights home to all the Sherpas and Nepalese workers stuck on the north side of Everest because the road is not opened yet. As for smuggling, the hardest thing was getting money in after the govt. announced to seize contributions. That is over now and I just got the maximum payment through to Kathmandu by Western Union yesterday. All the major aid groups are there and many smaller ones. There is a thread about that on Super Topo.
Another thing we can do is go there as tourists. Here is a statement from a former member of the Nepal Tourism Board.
Please Do not Cancel your trip to Nepal” : Basu Tripathi
| 06 May 2015 09:29
Respected Diplomatic Missions to Nepal, Dear Friends of Nepal/travelers around the world,
** Although historic monuments in Kathmandu valley, Everest Summiteers and Langtang area were strongly affected, other tourism attractions are almost unaffected. Pokhara, Lumbini, Annapurna , Chitwan,Tansen, Bandipure, Bardia etc are almost not affected.
All airports in the country are not affected .**
You should not cancel any Nepal Trip rather encourage others to visit Nepal for the following reasons;
1. Natural calamities such as Earthquake, Sunami are not predictable. But they do not normally repeat in the same place in short span of time. Nepal had such earthquake in 1934, which is 82 years ago.
2. With the due support of the world, we have almost completed search and rescue operation and the international rescue teams have returned home. Means, the life is gradually being normal.
3. There is no any problem of transport, accommodation and activities for tourists all around the country. All hotels in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Chitwan, Luimbini, Bardia and other tourist destinations are open.
**4. The international airport and all domestic airports were not affected by earthquake and all are in operation
5. All services including on arrival visa at the airport are provided regularly
6. All national and international airlines are providing their services regularly.
7. All trekking /hiking routes are open and all permits for these routes are being provided as usual.**
8. Nepal Government, Ministry of Tourism , Nepal Tourism Board, all tourism Entrepreneurs’ Associations are committed to make your Nepal Trip easy, comfortable, safe and guaranteed.
9. As the whole nation is united to minimize the effect, there is no political disturbance. No strike, no closure and all are ready for tourist services.
10. The international support in providing immediate relief/rescue is highly appreciated. Now, it is the phase of bringing other businesses in usual order.
Conclusion
As we could not stop such calamity, it happened. The whole world joined hands and united souls with Nepal to fight in minimizing it’s effects. Now is the phase of “survival of survived ones.”Each of us should help to live normal life for the survived people. For this, we need to try to build environment as normal as it was before.
We need to try our best to make affected ones to forget the pain of the calamity. **Tourism can be an immediate tool to make people active, busy and optimistic .Thus, we appeal all Embassies, Diplomatic Missions and Consulates to issue positive travel advisories about Nepal. Likewise, we request all friends of Nepal and Nepalese around the world not to cancel your Nepal Tours rather encourage others such as your friends, relatives and family members to travel Nepal. This will be a great help to rebuild our nation on the one hand, and your trip will be really memorable on the other hand.
**
Mr Tripathi is former member of NTB
 See more at: http://www.newsnrn.com/2015/05/06/12480/#sthash.j0VoN0XM.dpuf
See also:
I'm helping jobless Sherpas find work.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/06/news/nepal-quake-sherpa-tourism/
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