KATHMANDU: Eighty-five-year-old ex-Gurkha Min Bahadur Sherchan, who was attempting to reclaim his title as the world’s oldest person to summit Mount Everest died of altitude sickness or Acute Mountain Sickness the expedition organiser said on Sunday.

Min Bahadur Sherchan died at Everest base camp on Saturday and his body was airlifted to Kathmandu. “Doctors said he died of natural causes. There was water in his lungs because of altitude sickness,” Shiv Raj Thapa of Summit Nepal Trekking told AFP after an autopsy.

Sherchan was resting at the base camp and waiting for the weather window to summit in a single attempt, skipping the usual multiple acclimatisation rotations because of his age. He was in a bid to reclaim a title that he lost to Japanese mountaineer Yuichiro Miura in 2013.

The former soldier became the oldest person to summit Everest in 2008 when he was 76, but he lost the record five years later when Miura reached the 8,848-metre peak at the age of 80.

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