Adapting to an Empty Mt. Everest
On the 29th of May 1953, almost exactly 67 years ago to this day, Tenzing Norgay Sherpa stood next to Sir Edmund Hillary on the highest point on earth. They became the first people to summit Mount Everest and in doing so they gave birth to an industry that now supports over one million jobs in Nepal: tourism.
Nepal’s tourism industry began in the Khumbu Valley. Home to the Sherpa people, the pathway to Mount Everest, and also the focus of Variant Bio’s study into high altitude adaptation. The Variant team of Kaja, Stephane, and I saw the valley last year. We followed a melee of adventure seekers trekking higher and higher into the mountains. Occasionally leaving the beaten track, a moment of quiet away from the crowds, to meet our research partners. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine Khumbu without tourists. It feels as though every second building is a lodge — known locally as a Tea House — and every person involved in the hospitality industry.
According to the Nepal Tourism Board, spring of 2019 saw more than 72,000 trekkers arrive in the country to walk in the shadows of the highest mountains on earth. 2020 sees the entire industry grinding to an abrupt halt. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has made tourism impossible. Since the 24th of March Nepal has been in what the Nepali Times describes as one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns. Permits aren’t being issued, mountains aren’t being scaled, and hosts are not being paid.
To my Sherpa friends and colleagues, a halt to tourism like the one happening now isn’t new. 2015 saw a virtual shutdown of Nepal. The earthquake that took the lives of 9,000 people, including three close Nepalese friends, shattering the lives of so many in the country, also stopped tourism. As I filmed the recovery, I expected to tell a story of sorrow; the opposite was true. The story became one of resilience, hope, and adaptability. The Sherpa live in one of the most geographically uncertain areas on earth. Earthquakes, storms, landslides, melting glaciers, and avalanches are all things that are common in the Himalayas. They are all things Sherpa have adapted to, and now it seems we can add the coronavirus pandemic to that list.
Namgyal Sherpa is the owner of a trekking company, one tailored towards the more adventurous, going to the far reaches of the country. Nepal has two major seasons for tourism, spring and fall. Spring is the climbing season. Low pressure in the Bay of Bengal in spring, as monsoon season begins, pushes the jet streams off the highest peaks; the drop in wind speeds allow the mountains to be climbed safely. Mountaineers from around the world come during this time to make their attempts to summit the highest mountains on earth.
Fall sees the summer rains end and finer weather follows. This is peak season for trekking, walking below the peaks. Of Namgyal’s 98 international clients booked this spring, just four arrived before travel restrictions were put in place, two of whom are now living with their guide in the remote far west. “Dream now, visit later” is the mantra Namgyal and his colleagues in the tourism industry currently espouse.
According to Namgyal, farmers in Khumbu don’t supply the country with produce; they never have. Instead they feed their village, their neighbors and their friends. Almost all in Nepal have access to at least one meal a day. In the more densely populated capital, Kathmandu, it’s a little tougher, but the family unit is incredibly important for buffering times of hardship. No national pension system means those too old to work are generally supported by the younger generation. Families live together in houses expanded with each generation of marriages and newborns. The close knit family groups are locked down together and support one another.
Whilst this may not be true for all, it serves as comfort to know our research team in Nepal is safe and supported during the pandemic. Sonam Sherpa, the Principle Investigator of our study, has been in quarantine with his family for 64 days so far: “Before we didn’t spend time like this together, but this lockdown has brought everything together.”
“Nepali people are so helpful, those who can’t survive can go to a place to get food. Every ward [neighborhood] is offering food, people on Facebook are offering help… No matter how difficult the situation is, Nepali people always have a smile on their face. In times of crisis we are all Nepali, no matter the caste or tribe.”
The economic fallout is a little more complex, however. Namgyal believes it will be split between those who are able to pause operating, and those whose operations cannot be halted. The airlines are particularly vulnerable. Captain Siddartha Jang Gurung is a pilot and Executive Director of Simrik Air, a domestic airline: “We’ve invested so much into our pilots, we can’t let them go.”
“If we can survive as a group to the good times we can make it. Most of our pilots have been in the company for seven or eight years, but the foreign pilots we’ve had to send home, we believe it’s going to be two to three years before we can ask them to come back… Of the ten helicopter companies, three of us are working a little, the rest are almost closed.”
Known as one of Nepal’s best rescue pilots, Captain Siddartha would normally be helping climbers on the country’s highest peaks this time of year. Instead his aircraft are grounded, and his pilots twiddling their thumbs: “We have five machines [helicopters] but at the moment we only run one for medical emergencies.”
“We try to keep people working at least once a week to keep them healthy and avoid issues with mental health. Up to now we haven’t let anyone go but we can’t afford to pay salaries so for the last two months we’ve been paying a housing allowance to keep them with us.”
Two years after the 2015 earthquake, the tourism industry bounced back to record levels. By 2017 the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Civil Aviation recorded an increase of almost 25% from pre-earthquake levels. Dr. Dhananjay Regmi, CEO of the Nepal Tourism Board, wants to see this happen again and is working on maintaining the tourism industry in the meantime: “Now we are working on a survival strategy… In the future we need to give assurances that what we’re offering is completely safe. We are working on protocols with the Health Ministry to allow this.”
Dr. Regmi believes the key is to offer a sustainable future and feels the break in tourism gives them an opportunity: “We are using this time to clean the national parks.”
“People working in the mountains don’t have any jobs, so we created some jobs to support them. [This is especially important for] climbers and porters. We will be using the climbers to clean the mountains and the porters to clean the trekking routes… We will also be teaching them to maintain the environment. So far we have managed a fund to employ 1,800 people for this. We are waiting for the government to give us the greenlight after lockdown to begin expanding this program.”
“Visit Nepal 2020” was a landmark advertising campaign aimed to push Nepal into the forefront of travelers’ minds. Those events are cancelled and the campaign may already be a distant memory but Dr. Regmi is setting his sights higher. He’s in the process of designing a decade of events to inspire those around the world; he hopes the new, unofficial mantra “Dream now, visit later” is a message that spreads as fast as COVID-19. Tourists who have been trapped in Nepal because of travel restrictions have been taken in by local people and supported by local communities, where I’m sure they’ll develop a love of the country as strong as my own.
I, for one, can’t wait to make the most of Nepal’s new sustainable, greener tourism industry.
