The good, bad and ugly sides to climbing Mount Everest
The growing appetite for summiting the the world’s highest mountain has left this bucket-list staple littered with bodies and waste, while those who make the dream come true remain unsung and woefully underpaid
THE GOOD
Tibetans know it as Chomolungma and it’s Sagarmatha to the Nepalese. Exact translations are as elusive as a yeti and vary from “brow of the sky” to “goddess mother of the Earth” or simply “the mountain so high that no bird can fly over it”.
The British took a less evocative approach and named the world’s highest mountain after George Everest, surveyor general of India from 1830 to 1843. Before that, the colonials knew it only as Peak B.
There is similar disagreement over its exact height, particularly after an earthquake in 2015. The officially recognised figure is 8,848 metres, about 16 times the height of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong.
