Everest Beckons Another Bangladeshi
Wasfia goes for summit
2 conquerors yet to come down to base camp
A second Bangladeshi woman mountaineer, Wasfia Nazreen, started her push for the summit of Mount Everest yesterday, two days after Nishat Majumder conquered the world’s highest peak as the first Bangladeshi woman.
Using a satellite phone, Wasfia posted in Facebook, “This is it! I’m going up tonight [2:00am, 21st May] for a possible summit attempt on Friday morning, if all goes well.”
“If anything nasty happens to me, know that I have lived my life independently, honestly and creatively,” she added.
Meanwhile, Nishat and MA Muhit were staying at camp 2 at 6,300 metres to take rest, though they were scheduled to come back to the base camp yesterday.
“They have decided to pass the night at camp 2 for rest. They are likely to return to the base camp tomorrow [Tuesday] morning by 10:00am,” Enam Ul Haque, president of Bangla Mountaineering and Trekking Club, told The Daily Star.
Nishat along with her fellow Bangladeshi conqueror Muhit reached the summit of Everest on Saturday.
“I talked to Muhit today [Monday] around 10:45am over the phone. He called me by borrowing a mobile phone from others,” said Enam adding, “They are completely safe until now. I hope there will be no hazard on their way down.”
Due to the delay on their way to the base camp, their journey back to Bangladesh will also be delayed.
They were expected to arrive in Dhaka on Saturday or Sunday next, but now it will be delayed by at least a day.
At least three climbers died and two went missing while returning from the summit of Mount Everest on Saturday as a windstorm swept the mountain, reports BBC Online.
The dead are believed to be South Korean Song Won-bin, German Eberhard Schaaf and Nepali-born Canadian woman Shriya Shah, said the report, quoting an official of Nepali Mountaineering Department.
The missing mountaineers are believed to be a Chinese national and his Nepali guide.
Over 300 climbers belonging to 33 teams got permission to climb the mountain from the Nepali side of Mount Everest this season.
A study published in the British Medical Journal in 2006 revealed that on an average, there had been one death for every 10 successful attempts to scale the Everest, according to the BBC report.
Talking to The Daily Star yesterday, Nishat’s father Abdul Mannan Majumder urged people to pray for his daughter’s safe return home.
Musa Ibrahim on May 23, 2010, became the first Bangladeshi to conquer Everest, while MA Muhit has scaled the world’s highest mountain twice.
-With The Daily Star input
