“I climb into the void and let Fate decide whether I should live or die.”

Some mountaineers are just normal people who love the challenge. Some are egomaniacs. Some are just depressed.

A long, winding and narrow road runs alongside the beautiful, emerald green Trisuli River with its many white sandy banks lies between Kathmandu and Pokhara. Many trucks, tourist buses and cars ply this road day and night. This scenic road looks pretty accident prone to me. Perhaps it’s safer to fly to Pokhara.

Five people were killed and one injured when a car skidded off the road and plunged into Trishuli river at Jogimara in Dhading Wednesday night.

The car lost balance and skidded off the highway, plunging into the river some 150 meters down. Those killed in the accident have been identified as Krishna Dawadi, Sanjeev Dawadi, Rabindra Dawadi, Ramesh Dhungana and Ram Kumar Shrestha. The sixth passenger, Deepak Gurung, was injured in the accident.

The car was en route to Kathmandu from Pokhara. nepalnews.com

The 10th edition of Coca -Cola Tenzing-Hillary Everest Marathon is scheduled to be held on May 29th, 2012.

Organising a press conference in Kathmandu on Thursday, organisers Himalaya Expeditions Inc. and Adventure Sports Nepal said that race starts from expeditionary Everest Base Camp (5364 meter), near the Khumbu Glacier and ends at Namche Bazaar (3446 meter), the capital town of Sherpas covering a distance of 42.195 km.

The main purpose of this dubbed “World Highest Marathon” is to develop a new and unique tourism product to help uplift tourism in Nepal and contribute to opening up new international tourism markets and increase the number of visitors.

“We want to promote Nepal as the one of the best destinations for adventure sports in the world.” said the organiser.

Tenzing-Hillary Everest Marathon was first conducted on 29th May, 2003 to commemorate and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first successful ascent of Mt. Everest by Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and Edmund Hillary during in 1953. nepalnews.com

Start point at Everest Base Camp? This means the competitors must first make the trek to Everest Base Camp and start running down to Namche Bazaar. It sounds sensible unless some people want to helicopter in and run down. Let’s hope the prize is not a herd of yaks as the winner is most likely to be a Sherpa.

That’s one ingenious way to get the passengers’ attention while screening the safety video on board a flight. Air New Zealand’s safety video breaks all the rules. You definitely won’t see anything like this on SIA. Oh, don’t rush to book a flight on Air New Zealand to see this. The crew on duty will be dressed in their regular uniforms. You won’t see much in the video anyway. Just something to lift the boredom of flying.

Keith Wright, a pensioner from Queensland in Australia, will fly out to Europe on May 28, his eighth backpacking trip since he started travelling solo at the age of 85.

Read more about it over here.

Started at 85? It makes us wonder what he has been doing before that. Most of us in Singapore would be building our nest eggs. At this stage in our lives, even a one-week break is considered a long holiday. So which is your priority? To build your nest egg first or to travel first?

“Why are you so anxious to get yourself killed?”

It’s a memorable line but I can’t remember exactly which fictional character said that. I think it’s the book entitled The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes). Ted Malone, a young journalist just got spurned by the woman he loved and he decided to do something heroic by travelling to a remote plateau inhabited by dinosaurs – a recent discovery by an eccentric scientist, Professor Challenger.

I’m not sure whether the book is still in print, but it was a great read for a teenager of the late 70s. Of course, there aren’t any real dragons and dinosaurs around anymore, but within the hearts of many of us, is a dragon slayer.

I have seen bored housewives totally transformed into confident women after a trip to the Himalayas. Many of them return to the mountains with bigger and bigger ambitions. On the high peaks, some of them will meet their end. Was it a mistake to get them stated on adventure travel? Perhaps it’s just too much of something good. From timid people with low esteem, they have turned into egomaniacs. Success in an adventure trip builds confidence, but when that confidence turns into an obsession and fanaticism, the consequences of failure or bad luck are cast to the wind.

I’ve often wondered if there are other reasons why people go to the mountains and attempt dangerously creative stunts. Like what the character in Conan Doyle’s book asked, why are they so anxious to get themselves killed? Perhaps like I’ve said earlier, it’s just overdoing something good, or perhaps, it is something bad to begin with. They could be suffering from depression. It’s almost like an undecided attempt at suicide. They take a gamble and let fate decide whether they should just go gloriously into the snow or live on to try another day.

KATHMANDU – A small plane crashed near a treacherous high-altitude airport in northern Nepal on Monday, killing 15 people while six others miraculously survived, police said. The aircraft belonging to local carrier Agni Air ploughed into the ground just outside Jomsom airport, a gateway to the Annapurna mountain range, shortly after the pilot reported a fault. “Fifteen people have been killed. Thirteen of them were Indian tourists and the other two were Nepali pilots,” police spokesman Binod Singh told AFP. He said there were six survivors, among them a Nepali air hostess and an Indian man who is being treated for head injuries.

The Danish foreign ministry in Copenhagen said two Danes had also been rescued and were being treated in the city of Pokhara, 60 kilometres (40 miles) from Jomsom.

Basanta Dawadi, of the Pokhara tourism council, said he had spoken to the pair, a man and woman in their early 30s who were both trekkers.

“They told me the plane was about to land and suddenly it ascended and its left wing hit something. The plane rolled and then plunged into the ground. The emergency door opened and they crawled out of the aircraft.
“They told me they lost consciousness and then they were rescued.”

The man had foot injuries while the woman had a cut on her throat, Dawadi said.

The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu said two Indian children aged nine and six had been pulled out alive from the wreckage. It released no details about their injuries but said they had been taken to hospital.

This is terrible. Fortunately there are survivors. Flights into Jomsom are quite popular, especially now when parts of the Annapurna Circuit are motorable. With Nepal’s infrastructure being so badly strained and the smaller airlines so poorly regulated, more accidents like this are bound to happen. Having said that, air travel in Nepal is still relatively safe. Full article can be read here.

The tour operator who took the two Singaporeans who died of altitude sickness up Mount Kailash is believed to have been detained by the Tibetan authorities.

Nepali Prakash Shre, whose company also organises such tours, said word in the industry is that the Singaporeans’ tour guide did not have a permit from the authorities to take the group up Mount Kailash.

The two, a 66-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman, were at the 5,500m Dolma-la pass, the highest point of their journey on the sacred western Tibetan mountain, when they became breathless on Monday.

Mr Shre said the group of 10, who were there on a pilgrimage, had gone to Mount Kailash from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The tour operator was believed to have been detained on Tuesday.

This is getting ridiculous. They did not go with a reputed agency and picked an unlicensed guide off the streets of Kathmandu instead?

Altitude sickness is seldom suddenly fatal. More often than not, it gives you ample early warning. It even gives you a final warning before it kills you. Do not ignore the early warning signs.