Nepal’s air industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people between hard-to-reach areas as well as foreign trekkers and climbers.

But it has been plagued by poor safety due to insufficient training and maintenance — issues compounded by the mountainous republic’s treacherous geography.

The European Union has banned all Nepali carriers from its airspace over safety concerns.

The Himalayan country has some of the world’s trickiest runways to land on, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge even for accomplished pilots.

The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating treacherous flying conditions.

Nepal’s last major commercial flight accident was in January 2023, when a Yeti Airlines service crashed while landing at Pokhara, killing all 72 aboard.

That accident was Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane died when it crashed on approach to Kathmandu airport.

Earlier that year a Thai Airways aircraft had crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.

– AFP

Nepali climber Kami Rita Sherpa reached the top of Mount Everest for the 29th time on May 12, breaking his own record for the most summits of the world’s highest mountain.

“Kami Rita reached the summit this morning. Now he has made a new record with 29 summits of Everest,” Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, his expedition organiser, told AFP.

A guide for more than two decades, Sherpa, also known as “Everest Man”, first summited the 8,849-metre (29,032-foot) peak in 1994 when working for a commercial expedition.

Since then he has climbed Everest almost every year, guiding clients. It was not immediately clear whether he had a client with him on Sunday.

“Back again for the 29th summit to the top of the world… One man’s job, another man/woman’s dream,” Sherpa posted on his Instagram from base camp last week.

Last year, Sherpa climbed Everest twice to reclaim his record as another guide, Pasang Dawa Sherpa, equalled his number of ascents.

Sherpa, 54, has previously said that he has been “just working” and did not plan on setting records.

He has also conquered other challenging 8,000-metre peaks including the world’s second-highest mountain, K2 in Pakistan.

Nepal has issued 414 Everest permits to mountaineers for this year’s spring climbing season, which runs from April to early June.

Most Everest hopefuls are escorted by a Nepali guide, meaning more than 800 climbers will tread the path to the top of the world’s highest peak in the coming weeks after a group of Nepali climbers opened the route to the summit on Friday.

This year, China also reopened the Tibetan route to foreigners for the first time since closing it in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 10 highest peaks and welcomes hundreds of adventurers each spring, when temperatures are warm and winds are typically calm.

A climbing boom has made mountaineering a lucrative business since Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tenzing Norgay made the first ascent in 1953.

Last year, more than 600 climbers made it to the summit of Everest but it was also the deadliest season on the mountain, with 18 fatalities.

Smoke rises from burning tires during a Hindu rally in Nepalgunj, about 400 kilometres west of the capital, Kathmandu, Nepal on October 3, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Despite quickly escalating tensions between Hindus and Muslims, the night passed peacefully after a lockdown was imposed and security heightened in a city in southwest Nepal, officials said.

Trouble began in the regional hub city of Nepalgunj over the weekend after a Hindu boy posted a status about Muslims on social media. Muslims protested the status inside the region’s main government administrator’s office building, burned tires on the streets and blocked traffic.

A larger Hindu rally was held Tuesday until stones and bottles were thrown at protesters, resulting in a few minor injuries.

The indefinite curfew was imposed since Tuesday afternoon in Nepalgunj, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, directly after the Hindu protest came under attack.

Area police chief Santosh Rathore said officers were patrolling the city and people were not allowed to leave their homes or gather in groups during the lockdown. There were no reports of any trouble overnight, nor on Wednesday morning.

Officials said they needed to impose the stay-at-home order and stop people from gathering together to prevent any more clashes between the two sides.

Communal violence is not common in Nepal, which is a Hindu majority country that turned secular just a few years ago. Muslims make up roughly a third of Nepalgunj’s population, and only about 14% of India’s population, which shares a border with the Nepal town and has seen a widening religious divide.