Few
months ago, I had an occasion to listen to a member of the team from
my home town Pune, who had scaled Mt. Everest on 16th
March of this year (2012) along with one of his team-mate. The one
hour talk turned out to be a thrilling experience for me, as climbing
Mt. Everest still remains one of the most daunting and challenging
task for any person.
During
his talk, the guest speaker mentioned about one sore spot of the
expedition. He talked about the heaps and heaps of litter and trash
lying along the entire route to top of the mountain. This litter has
been generated by generations of climbers, who have been trying to
climb this greatest challenge for the mankind. Because of the
extremely cold conditions, this litter remains intact as left by the
climbers, and does not deteriorate or decompose at all. He mentioned
about having seen even some dead bodies of the climbers and sherpas,
who have died in previous expeditions. The situations has become so
bad that the route to Mt. Everest has become a garbage dump at some
places, where almost all climbers usually have their camps.
An art
group, Da Mind Tree from Nepali capital Kathmandu, decided to do
something about the garbage on the Mt. Everest and collected about
1.5 tons of garbage, which included empty oxygen bottles, gas
canisters, food cans, torn tents, ropes, crampons, boots, plates,
twisted aluminum ladders and torn plastic bags dumped by climbers
over decades on the slopes of the world’s highest mountain. The
trash was picked up from the mountain by Sherpa climbers in 2011 and
earlier part of 2012. It was brought down to Kathmandu by porters and
trains of long-haired animals known as yaks.
After
collecting the garbage, fifteen Nepali artists closeted with it for a
month. When they emerged out, they had transformed the Mt. Everest
garbage into art and had created 75 sculptures, including one of a
yak and another of wind chimes. The art group is led by Mr. Kripa
Rana Shahi. He says that the sculpting, and a recent exhibition of
the sculptures in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu were all aimed at
spreading awareness about keeping Mount Everest trash or garbage
free. He says rightly that “Everest is our crown jewel in the
world. We should not take it for granted. The amount of trash there
is damaging our pride.”
The
sculptures included a Tibetan mandala painting, which showed the
location of Mount Everest in the universe, was made by sticking
yellow, blue and white pieces of discarded beer, food cans and other
metals on a round board. In an another sculpture, empty oxygen
cylinders were mounted on a metal frame to make Buddhist prayer
wheels.
Mt.
Everest was first scaled by Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand and
Tenzing Norgay of India in 1953. Since then, more than 4,000 people
have climbed the 29,035 feet peak including the team from Pune. As I
have mentioned above, the climbers report that the mountain slopes
are littered with trash which remains buried under the snow during
the winter and resurfaces again in the summer when the snow melts.
Government
of Nepal takes a deposit of US$ 4000 from all climbing teams to
ensure that the teams bring back all the garbage generated by them on
the mountain. However, since physical verification is almost
impossible, some amount of trash remains on the slopes.
The
art pieces created have been kept on sale. Parts of the proceeds
would go to artists and the balance to the Everest Summiteers’
Association (ESA), which sponsored the collection of garbage from the
mountain.
During
the lecture about Mt. Everest expedition from Pune, the young speaker
had showed us some photographs of the trash collected on the mountain
slopes, which were quite disgusting. This art creation is therefore a
great initiative, and might lead to some reduction at least in the
trash on the slopes of the highest mountain on planet earth.
29
November 2012
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