Cleaning Up After Us

The conquest of Everest by western civilisation and market forces has led to the usual difficulties: lots of rubbish and a number of bodies which the natives are now finding it necessary to clean up a little. The natives speak a local Tibetan language in which, since they don't know any better, the mountain is called Chomolungma; and at least one of them blames global warming for the melting of the snow which has concealed many of the trappings of western civilisation until now. Fourteen years ago a disaster near the summit killed three Indian paramilitary police and five real people, causing fierce arguments over the commercialisation of mountaineering on Everest (which, Britain's leading liberal newspaper takes care to inform us, is the world's highest peak), despite the fact that commercial mountaineering is one of the few pastimes available to distract the natives from their poverty, civil strife, misgovernment, leeches and the World Bank.