You may have seen the news: China plans to build a highway to Mt. Everest in the Himalayas.
This is highly curious. Mountaineers are a rugged breed. Those climbing Everest even more so. Does this road mean China wants more tourists to go to the base camp?
That was one of the questions in my head when I went this morning to hear the chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Qiangba Puncog, offer his first press conference in Beijing.
Here is what he said to my question:
“A number of tourists have come to visit Mt. Everest in the past several years, and many of them are from overseas, as you probably know. They like mountain climbing. But they complain about the bad road conditions, or the lack of security facilities. It's their hope to improve the road conditions. Therefore we are building the road in order to facilitate visitors to Mt. Everest. On the hand, it is not feasible to build hotels there due to the high altitude of the place, which is more than 5,000 meters above sea level. Ordinary people can hardly spend a night there whereas climbers have their own tents and other well-prepared equipment. They will not stay in hotels. So even though I don't rule out the possibility of building hotels there in future, we don't have plans to build them at present.”
So I still don’t get it. The Tibetan chairman didn't mention what some media have said: that China wants to facilitate the way for torchbearers who will be taking the Olympic flame up to the top of Everest in the days before the Summer Games next year. After the rigors of the mountain, I'm not sure a gravel road will seem like much of an obstacle to them.
So is China spending the equivalent of $19.7 million so that a trickle of tourists have a more pleasant journey to Base Camp? And it doesn’t plan any facility for them to spend the night?
Base Camp, at 17,000 plus feet above sea level, is about a three-hour drive from the nearest sizable town, Tingri. Click here to see a short video I took while at Base Camp in mid-April.
A paved road through fragile high-mountain terrain is likely to draw a lot more tourists. Already, some people outside China are reacting negatively. The honorary head of India’s mountaineering association called it “a preposterous idea. These are very fragile and eco-sensitive areas. Someone might call it developing the region, but it will end up destroying the area.”
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