First foreign climbing expedition in Nepal since Covid-19 shutdown ended scale 8,000-metre Himalayan peak Manaslu
- Thirteen climbers from a Bahraini expedition to Nepal, including a member of the royal family, reach the summit of 8,163-metre Manaslu in the Himalayas
- In Tanzania, several climbing parties are forced to evacuate Mount Kilimanjaro as a wildfire sweeps the slopes of the 5,895-metre peak, Africa’s highest
Thirteen climbers representing the Royal Guard of Bahrain have made it to the top of Mount Manaslu in Nepal, becoming the first group of climbers to scale the world’s eighth highest peak in 2020, officials said.
Mira Acharya, director of Nepal’s Department of Tourism, said on Thursday that 13 members of the expedition team and their assisting Sherpas successfully reached the top of the 8,163-metre Himalayan peak.
“The final number of summiteers could go up as this is only a preliminary report,” Acharya said.
This is the first foreign expedition to the Himalayas since Nepal suspended mountaineering to contain the spread of the coronavirus in March.
The expedition was organised by the Royal Guard of Bahrain, and the team included a member of Bahrain's royal family, according to Nepal's embassy in Bahrain. Before heading to Mount Manaslu, the expedition team, comprising 15 Bahraini and three British nationals, had climbed the 6,119-metre Mount Lobuche, near Everest.
Home to eight of the 14 peaks over 8,000 metres in the world, Nepal reopened the mountains in July, but saw only four applications for Manaslu and other smaller peaks.
Nepal has 121,745 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 694 related deaths.
Meanwhile, in Tanzania, East Africa, authorities plan to bring in helicopters to start fighting a fire on Mount Kilimanjaro that has been raging since Sunday, after admitting that extinguishing the blaze is harder than they thought it would be.
“The challenge is strong winds and dry grass and vegetation,” Tanzanian Minister of Tourism Hamisi Kigwangalla said on Twitter on Thursday. “Once arrangements are completed today we might start using helicopters and planes to tackle the fire.”
A camp of international mountaineers had to be evacuated overnight, a tour organiser said.
“Besides my Swiss group, there were five to six other groups who had to break up their tents at midnight,” said Henning Schmidt, a German guide on Africa’s highest mountain, adding “the fire is now expanding more and more”.
Satellite images show a clear spread of the flames, and a group of Germans, Austrians and Swiss who were climbing the mountain on Thursday reported strong winds and a thick layer of ash that covered their tents.
“There is too much smoke here: we are afraid of carbon monoxide poisoning,” mountain guide Debbie Bachmann said, adding that she and her group of tourists would stop their ascent.
According to officials, since Sunday the fire has destroyed at least 28 square kilometres of bush and some 500 people are working to quell the flames.
At 5,895 metres, Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest mountain and also one of Tanzania’s biggest tourism draws.
