Hyderabad: The recent earthquake in Nepal has exposed loopholes in conducting mountaineering expeditions by Indians.
The government authorities were caught off guard as information kept trickling in of Indians, including those from AP and Telangana, stuck in mountains after the earthquake.
Most of the individual mountaineers and adventure clubs do not inform the government authorities before going on expeditions abroad. While there are guidelines for it, there are no laws which make it mandatory.
K. Ranga Rao, ex-officio member of Indian Mountaineering Foundation, says, “Mountaineers from India, whether conducting an expedition in India or abroad, have to submit a set of six applications as per guidelines to the IMF with various details including number of members in a group, qualification and composition of team, duration of expedition, medical certificates along with residential proofs.”
“IMF will send these documents to the ministry of external affairs and other government agencies. The benefit of this is that the government will have information about people who might be affected due to some untoward incident like the one in Nepal.”
Mr Rao further says, “In European and some Asian countries like Iran, Pakistan and India, authorities do not permit conducting expedition without requisite permission from mountaineering foundation of a mountaineer’s home country. However, in Nepal and few African and South American nations there are no stringent measures in place as mountaineering and trekking earns them a lot of revenue.”
An expedition to Mt Everest via some operators costs up to Rs 25 lakh and up to base camp costs between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh.
Mr Rao adds “Nowadays many adventure clubs have mushroomed, people just want to climb a mountain after some basic informal course, click selfies and claim that they conquered a peak without proper photo evidence.”
