Nepal honours 8 foreign mountaineers who scaled Mt Everest in 1978

Nepal government today honoured eight foreign mountaineers, who were part of a team that scaled Mt Everest in 1978, marking the 40th anniversary of their ascent of the world's highest mountain peak.

The mountaineers, from various countries, were felicitated by Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Rabindra Adhikari in a special ceremony organised here.

Standing 8,848-metre high, Everest was first summitted in 1953 by Nepal's Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand's Edmund Hillary.

The mountaineers honoured today constituted a 12-member-team which had a historic summit of the peak four decades ago, with two of its members reaching the top of the world without oxygen.

Eight surviving members from the team had arrived in Nepal together for the first time for the event.

Reinhold Messner (Italy), Oswald Oelz (Switzerland), Peter Habeler (Austria), Wolfgang Nairz (Austria), Raimund Margreiter (Austria), Robert Schauer (Austria), Hanns Schell (Austria) and Helmut Hagner (Austria) are the surviving members of the expedition.

Messner and Habeler had scaled the peak in Nepal-Tibet, without supplementary oxygen when all of them had scaled the Everest in 1978.

Messner believes that the expedition to 'Sagarmatha', the Nepalese name for Everest, has become more of a tourism event than a mountain expedition in the recent years.

"Decades ago, climbing mountain was all about adventure as it was without fixed schedules and no use of high-end, equipment and technology. Now, it's more like a tourism activity rather than mountaineering, it has been quiet easy," Messner told media.

Minister for Tourism Adhikary said that Nepal's mountaineering activities are under-publicised and strssed the need for collectively working towards promoting mountain tourism.

"You are our goodwill ambassadors, our missionaries who will convey the message to world community in a factual manner," he said of the iconic mountaineers who were honoured at the event.

He also announced the Nepal government's plan to observe year 2020 as 'Visit Nepal Year' with the objective of attaining 1.5 million visitors annually, a 50 per cent rise against the current footfall and increasing tourism's contribution to GDP to 25 per cent from the current five per cent.