Khumbu Climbing Center: Training mountaineering safety on the lap of Mount Everest

There is pin-drop silence at the village of Phortse in Khumbu near Mount Everest. Almost everyone from the village during the months of April and May is at the base camp of Mount Everest . Such is the legacy of the place that every household in the village has at least one Everest summitter. Almost all of them are either climbing or supporting the climbers.

Things, however, change drastically around January when the village is full of people from Khumbu and other parts of the country. Aspiring mountaineers, both Nepali and foreign, gather around the Khumbu Climbing Center , a training centre that teaches them about the ins and outs of mountaineering on Nepal’s Himalayas. There, they learn the basics of mountaineering, from tying knots to climbing ice. In 15 days, they go back with the ability to tackle mighty mountains like Everest where most of them go looking for jobs in the spring.