THE new sunday express MAGAZINE Voices Devdutt Pattanaik Anuja Chandramouli Ravi Shankar Anand Neelakantan Dr Deepali Bhardwaj Swami Sukhabodhananda The Great Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment october 4 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Everest Invasion The world’s tallest mountain is being desecrated and overwhelmed by the obsessive pastime of wealthy crowds seeking paid-for adventure, turning a onceformidable climb into a commercialised pursuit I By Tanisha Saxena n March 1923, George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. By then he had climbed the mountain twice. He had watched seven porters die in an avalanche the previous year. Stoically he uttered three words which illus, trates man’s confrontation with nature: “Because it’s there.” Mallory believed a mountain was not an opponent to be beaten but a place for a person to test themselves. They were true mountaineers in spirit, in soul, in action: they did not climb using snowmobiles, expensive sophisticated modern gear or a helicopter; just courage and the excitement of attaining the home of the gods. Now, the controversy is no longer about the crowded Base Camp and the garbage. It is something more alarming. The rampant commercialisation of Mount Everest has led to a tech-obsessed, Instagram-led, high-spending ecosystem, which neither respects the sanctity of the adventure nor understand its dangers. But then, there are the brave who venture into death and conquer what the mountain wills. In May this year, Arun Kumar Tiwari, a mountaineering enthusiast from Hyderabad, died near the Hillary Step after summiting Everest. But he did conquer it. His family decided not to retrieve the body because of the extraordinary danger and cost involved. Tiwari remains frozen in time like so many before him. THE MULTI CRORE DESECRATIONS A century after Mallory at 3 am on May , 20, 2026, a line of headlamps could be seen moving up Everest from the south. By the end of the day a record 274 people had , reached the summit via Nepal. Locals call climbers like them “Everest tourists”. Many had paid more than $45,000 each, relied on bottled oxygen, clipped onto fixed ropes secured by Nepali workers and carried satellite phones—just in case they ran into a Yeti, an impossibility For them, . Everest is increasingly a trip to tick off, like boating on Dal Lake. Dr Priya Selvaraj, who summited Everest this season, speaks of the peril faced by genuine mountaineers. On the way up, she encountered a serac—an unstable block or column of glacial ice formed by intersecting crevasses—which she describes as “an overhanging piece of ice, threatening to drop.” The danger delayed her Everest season by two to three weeks. The ice was not kind to the Sherpas securing the route either. “Many of the Sherpas were critically injured, and one of them lost his life,” she says. For Selvaraj, this season also set a record for the sheer concentration of thrill-seeking tourists, not merely the number of permits issued. A widely published photograph of nearly 200 climbers strung along the route captures the phenomenon: “almost like a whole snake,” she says. “So many people climbing simultaneously is dangerous. They have to be supported, but you really can’t support another person unless you’re alright yourself.” CALLOUS AND CRASS The profile of Mount Everest’s workforce has changed as much as its clientele. Between 2000 and 2025, 15,781 people went above Nepal’s Base Camp: 6,787 paying clients and 8,994 hired support climbers. In 2025 alone, 437 Nepalis and 272 foreigners reached the summit. Nepali workers now dominate Everest’s commercial climbing economy—but they also bear a disproportionate share of its risks. Of the 339 deaths recorded on the mountain by 2025, 132 were hired workers, primarily Sherpas. All three fatalities at the start of this season were Nepali mountain workers. On April 18, 2014, an ice avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 Nepali workers, then the deadliest single day in Everest’s history. A year later, on April 25, 2015, an earthquake triggered an avalanche at Base Camp, killing about 22 people. The risks are built into the job. “Sherpas go through the Khumbu Icefall many times carrying loads, fixing ropes, and preparing the route before clients climb,” says Pemba Sherpa, whose father died on a Makalu winter expedition this year. “Sherpa” is an ethnic identity but on the , Everest it has also become a job title loosely applied to high-altitude workers from other communities, including Rai and Tamang climbers. Many are young and, according to veteran guides, less experienced than the Sherpas of earlier decades. Sudhigya, a climber caught this season in a two-hour bottleneck near the Hillary Step in winds exceeding 80 km an hour, argues that Everest’s economics encourages clients to lean on that workforce beyond what is fair. “The most dangerous assumption in modern commercial climbing is that money guarantees safety he says. “‘The Sherpa ,” will carry me, the Sherpa will fix my mistakes.’” He objects to what he sees as an entitled attitude: “Sherpas are human beings with beating hearts, families, and children waiting for them back in the valley They are not superhuman pack . animals hired to drag dead weight up and down an 8,000-meter wall.” A client who refuses to turn around because “their ego demands a summit photo,” he says, is gambling with someone else’s life as well as their own. “A true mountaineer does not outsource their survival.” In 2025 alone, 437 Nepalis and 272 foreigners reached the summit Turn to page 2 A snaking queue at the Everest summit Arjun Vajpai, India’s first climber to summit eight 8,000 metres peaks, rejects the idea that Everest has simply become easier Saanika Shah, who summited Everest this year, remembers being trapped in a narrow ridge where climbers had to wait On April 18, 2014, an ice avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 Nepali workers, then the deadliest single day in Everest’s history. A year later, on April 25, 2015, an earthquake triggered an avalanche at Base Camp, killing about 22 people