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Henry Todd, or how the ‘king of LSD’ ended up creating the first low-cost agency for Everest tourists
A few weeks ago, hundreds of climbers hoping to summit Everest were stranded at the mountain’s South Base Camp in Nepal, waiting for a massive block of ice to finally break away and clear the route to Camp I through the Khumbu Icefall. If the climbers were anxious, local agencies were nearly in panic: so much money is at stake that a closed Mount Everest means ruin. But the profits from mountain tourism do not improve the quality of life in a country that, a few months ago, repressed young people protesting in Kathmandu and that in recent days has demolished a vast shantytown sheltering nearly 1.5 million workers, who have been forcibly relocated to places that are equally unfit and even more dangerous. The sun shines on Everest, however, and the sherpas who rig the maze of ice and crevasses in the Khumbu have finally found a safe route that avoids the threatening ice mass.
© Purnima Shrestha (REUTERS)
