KATHMANDU, MARCH 15
The Bahrain royal team has arrived here today for the Mt Everest expedition in this spring season.
The Bahrain Defence Force (Mt Everest team) comprising 16 members, including Bahraini royal family member Shaikh Mohamed Hamad Mohamed Al Khalifa, has arrived here. The team of 13 Bahrainis and three British nationals will be here for the next 80 days.
According to Thaneshwor Guragain, general manager of Seven Summits Trek, a company that is organising the expedition for the royal team, the team will stay in quarantine for the next seven days. After that they are scheduled to go to Chumnurbi Rural Municipality of Gorkha district.
"Five members of the team will travel to the rural municipality to distribute 2,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines against the COVID-19 infection for the people of Samagaun village," he said.
As per Guragain, the expedition will begin from the end of March. A team of 100 people, including the royal expedition team members, Sherpas, mountain guides and high altitude workers will be climbing Mt Everest. "It will be a rare feat if the royal family members are able to scale to the top of the world," he said, "Thus, we are trying our best to provide the best quality service to the expedition team." He further said that the expedition preparations have been almost completed.
"There are two major significances to this expedition. One is that the Bahraini royal family is promoting Mt Everest by climbing amid this pandemic.
Another is that of security concerns as they belong to the royal family," he said, "However, they have put their faith on Nepali Sherpas to ensure their safety and are doing our best so that they return with nothing but pleasant memories from here."
He further said that this expedition will help to promote that Nepali mountaineering sector is safe and secure.
The team has already scaled Lobuche peak and Mt Manaslu in the October of 2020.
The other Bahrain nationals in the team are Ebrahim Mohamed Abdulla Ebrahim Mohamed, Mohamed Ali Jasim Ahmed Al Boainain, Ebrahim Khalil Ebrahim Zayed Mohamed Aljazzaf, Ahmed Saif Ahmed Isa Alkaabi, Mohamed Abdul Rahaman Yusuf Alkawari, Khaled Ali Hasan Ebrahim Hasan Aldossery, Abdullaziz Rafea Abbar Khalaf Alabed, Khaled Sultan Mohamed Abdullah Alsheerawi, Murad Mohamed Yusuf Abdulsayed, Ebrahim Ali Salem Jaber, Saud Hamad Mubarak Hamad Eid, and Mohammed Isa Abdullah Yusuf Alqais.
Meanwhile, the team members include British nationals Richard Warren McConnel, Phillip Clough and Christopher Anthony.
A version of this article appears in the print on March 16, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
