SILIGURI/ DARJEELING
When Kathmandu’s P Sherpa says, ” Paisa pheko, tamasha dekho”, he isn’t referring to some frivolous entertainment. That’s actually his take on what for long has been considered the ultimate human challenge: reaching the top of Mount Everest.
“You pay me the money and I will make you an ‘Everester’,” says Sherpa, himself a 10-timer on the world’s highest mountain, breaking into a wide grin. “I can get you almost anything even at the summit camp – from an extra bottle of oxygen to champagne, as you wish.”
Today, scaling the Everest is a distinctly different, and significantly easier, experience to what the likes of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay went through decades ago. It no longer seems to be the world’s most difficult test of human endurance and skill. Everest is now a commercial proposition, a brand.
Full report here Economic Times
