New Delhi: Indians living in big cities are all used to traffic congestion, which has become a part and parcel of their daily lives.
But a ‘traffic jam’ on Mount Everest?
Yes, you heard that right.
The number of mountaineers seeking to conquer the world’s tallest mountain is going up by leaps and bounds.
Recently, a video showing a long queue of climbers approaching the Everest has gone viral on Internet.
The clip, posted by Rajan Dwivedi from his Instagram handle everester.raj on May 20, shows him waiting in a single line with dozens of climbers behind him trying to make the summit.
“Mt Everest is not a joke and in fact, quite a serious climb,” Dwivedi wrote, describing his experience and how tough it is after reaching the top of the 8,848-metre peak at 6 am on May 19.
“Coming down was a nightmare and exhausting while huge line of climbers were coming up to maximise on the weather window!!” he further posted, adding that around 7,000 people have successfully reached the Everest summit since the first ascent in May 1953.
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According to the New York Post, the climbers were stranded following an incident last Tuesday in which Briton Daniel Paterson and his Nepali Sherpa Pastenji were hit by falling ice as they climbed down from the summit.
The 39-year-old Paterson and his 23-year-old guide reached the top of Everest on Tuesday as part of a group, but have not been heard in six days, according to a BBC report.
The company which organised the expedition said the mishap happened on Hilary Step, a vertical rock face near the summit. According to them, the two men fell down towards “the Tibet side through a very vertical steep.”
There have been some other videos of the rush to summit the world’s highest peak, leading to concerns of overcrowding expressed by several environmentalists and climbers.
These videos of the queue up Everest and the aftermath of the cornice collapse that killed a couple of people…
There’s something about this that sums up so much of what’s wrong with the world.
😮 pic.twitter.com/S2qv1oBAOG— tern (@1goodtern) May 24, 2024
Despite accidents and deaths along the icy route, the popularity of Everest and desire to conquer it hasn’t waned at all.
The peak is considered dangerous because oxygen levels and air pressure at such height are not sufficient to sustain human life for a long time.
