Page 3 - Guy Cotter News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

"Last year Nepal did very well at locking down the country, and not allowing any expeditions or trekkers to come into the country, and they actually shut off the Khumbu Valley, which is the gateway to Mount Everest, and it's very inaccessible ... so it was a good place to actually stop people getting in there, and stop Covid getting in there," Cotter says. "[But] local Nepalese operators were really hurting through not being able to operate, so they enabled domestic tourism to start up initially. That took the first Covid into the Khumbu Valley. Then they enabled some foreigners to go in, and...

For the first time in over a year, the sounds of yak bells and foreigners’ footsteps are filling the  foothills of Mount Everest. As the coronavirus spread last spring, Nepal locked down its borders on March 24, 2020. The country stayed closed until this month, when it fully opened its mountains to climbers who pass a COVID-19 protocol. According to Nepal’s Department of Immigration, nearly 15,000 trekkers and tourists arrived in the country in March, over half of them coming from nearby India. (In normal years, that number is usually closer to 150,000 for the same time frame.) As ...

Dr Kami Temba Sherpa of the remote Khunde Hospital in the Himalayas has concerns about the border opening after he contracted COVID-19 in December. "When I developed pneumonia or my oxygen saturation was dropping down, I thought I was not going to make it," he tells Newshub. He believes there's a high chance new strains of COVID-19 will come in with the mountaineers. "People are working, walking, without any masks, there's no social distancing, there's no physical distancing. So yeah, we are worried." The remote Khumbu region of the Himalayas is home to thousands of Sherpas, and the virus has...

Tourism operators voice concern about bureaucracy post-industry review Tess Brunton © RNZ / Dom Thomas Tourism operators are worried they will being bogged down by bureaucracy following a review of adventure activities near natural hazards. Today, the first findings from the review - triggered by the Whakaari eruption - were revealed. WorkSafe has come under increased scrutiny for not providing enough oversight of the sector. Adventure Consultants chief executive Guy Cotter did not want to see safety become more of a box ticking exercise that was more focused on punishing co...

Today, the first findings from the review - triggered by the Whakaari eruption - were revealed. WorkSafe has come under increased scrutiny for not providing enough oversight of the sector. Adventure Consultants chief executive Guy Cotter did not want to see safety become more of a box ticking exercise that was more focused on punishing companies than protecting people. He was worried about WorkSafe playing a larger regulating role. "Then we get more people who are not familiar with the area that they're auditing and the only way they can do that is by having more boxes to tick. That doesn't l...