The surviving Taiwanese (l.) in a hospital in Kathmandu

Mountain rescuers in the Alps often complain about climbers or hikers, who overestimate their abilities, suddenly can not move neither forward nor back and have to be rescued from this precarious situation on the mountain. That’s what happened to a young couple from Taiwan, who were on a trekking tour in the mountains of Nepal, more precisely in Langtang, without a guide. The two had been missing for 47 days. Now rescuers found the 21-year-old man lying unconsciously in a cave at the foot of a rock, his 19-year-old girlfriend was dead. According to the Taiwanese she had died three days earlier.

At the end only water

The rescuers reported that the trekking tourists had got lost and descended a steep rocky slope because they hoped to reach a village in the valley on this way. However, a gorge with a waterfall cut off the path. They could not return because they were unable to climb the rock up again. First they had eaten their supplies of noodles and potatoes, the survivor said. When the food had been consumed, they only had drunk water.

Maggots and lice

The sight of the Taiwanese was not exactly appetizing. His right leg was infested with maggots, his head full of lice. The young man is said to have lost thirty kilos. The survivor’s father had traveled to Nepal after the couple had been reported missing, and had hired a helicopter to search for the two trekking tourists. In the Himalayan state it happens again and again that hikers are missing. In almost all previous cases, the trekkers were traveling alone and without local guides. This should actually give all hikers who travel to Nepal food for thought.

Piles of rubble where Langtang Village was

About 100 seconds were enough to transform Nepal from a dreamland to a nightmare country. The earthquake on 25 April left a trail of devastation. In some mountain regions the quake triggered avalanches of debris, mud, ice or snow that razed entire villages to the ground. According to the Nepalese government, about 500,000 houses were completely destroyed by the main earthquake and numerous aftershocks. The authorities registered to date more than 8,600 deaths. Five German tourists were among the victims, four others are still missing, a spokesman of the Foreign Office in Berlin confirmed to me today. Many dead, buried deep under piles of rubble, will probably never be recovered. What a tragedy.

More than one million jobs in tourism

“The world must go on”, said Ganga Sagar Pant, CEO of the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal (TAAN). “The tourism products are still there — mountains, flora and fauna, jungles, trails.”

On the Annapurna Circuit

In Nepal, one of the 20 poorest countries in the world, tourism is one of the main sources of income. More than one million jobs depend on it directly or indirectly. The German Foreign Office is currently advising against “non-essential traveling to Nepal as infrastructure and supplies are still overloaded as a result of the earthquake. This is especially true for trips to the Langtang Valley and to the area around Annapurna, which are persistently threatened by further landslides or avalanches.”

Government: Major destinations “safe and intact”

The government in Kathmandu has launched a campaign to avoid that tourism will collapse completely. In view of the next fall season, the Tourism Ministry “used its resources to assess the conditions of major tourism products of Nepal”. They were “safe and intact”, the Ministry informed. That included the most popular trekking routes like the Annapurna Circuit and the Everest trek. “We encourage all tourists to visit Nepal and through this to help Nepalese people who are in trouble in this devastation.”

Most routes are passable

Living in ruins

“We tend to be more discriminating, we assess each single region and route”, Manfred Haeupl, head of German trekking and expedition operator “Hauser Exkursionen” wrote to me. “You can not just say: Nepal is safe and intact – the damage is too great. However, some reports are exaggerated. The degree of damage at the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Nepal reportedly varied from 25 to 70 percent. Which report should we trust?” Dominik Mueller, head of the German operator Amical alpin, refers to information from Nepal, according to which only two of the 35 most popular trekking routes were impassable after the quake. One of them was in the particularly hard-hit area of Langtang, Dominik told me. He was not yet quite sure which was the other route: “I’m still waiting for a reply from Nepal.” Two leading representatives of the German operator DAV Summit Club are staying in Nepal in order to get an idea of the earthquake damage. In early June, Summit Club would inform its customers, Christoph Schnurr, director of product management, wrote to me.

So far, few cancellations

The heads of Hauser and Amical assume that they will be able to realize most of the planned treks they offered for next fall – if not too many customers cancel their bookings. Just now there is no such trend. “We have only a few cancellations. Many are still waiting how the situation develops in the region they want to travel to”, Manfred Haeupl, the owner of Hauser, wrote. There were also new bookings with explicit reference of the customers that they wanted to prove their solidarity with Nepal, said Manfred, adding however, that most customers would not book before summer. “In recent days, our office has got more and more requests”, said Dominik Mueller, head of Amical. “There are divided opinions. Some say that they don’t want to spend their holidays in a country where people suffer. Others – and this is the greater part – want to travel to Nepal in any case, next fall and in the future too. I personally think that the best way to help Nepal is by realizing the planned trips in fall. Doing this, you give the people in Nepal a new task and new hope. And last but not least you directly pay the man on the street.”

Matthias Baumann (r.) in the hospital of Dhulikhel

He did not hesitate. When the first reports on the devastating earthquake in Nepal came in, the German doctor and climber Matthias Baumann packed his stuff. The trauma surgeon from the town of Tuebingen flew to the disaster area in order to help. For more than a week, the 43-year-old worked in a hospital in the mountain town of Dhulikhel, 25 kilometers east of the capital Kathmandu. Before he will fly home on Sunday, he wants to make another trip to the countryside to get an overview about the situation there and to help wherever he can.

Matthias, you have now been in Nepal for one and a half week. How long did you work each day?

We started in the morning at 8 a.m. with a meeting of all senior doctors and nurses. We discussed what was needed at the hospital and at the ambulance stations in the countryside. Then we got going. There were no prescribed working hours. Everyone worked as long as he was able to do so. Mostly I left the hospital at 10 or 11 p.m.

Patients waiting patiently

What was your job in the hospital?

I spent most of the time in the operating room. We were treating particularly fractures of arms and legs. From time to time I joined the team in the emergency room.

Where did the patients come from?

Dhulikhel is an hour’s drive east of Kathmandu, it is very hilly there. The city is situated at the road to Tibet. Therefore we got patients particularly from the eastern mountain regions. For them, it was the first major hospital on the way to Kathmandu.

Are these people traumatized?

Yes, definitely. But I admire them for accepting the situation without complaining. They have suffered an incredible fate: They lost their loved ones; they had a long way to come to the hospital; they have to sleep in the corridor or even outside; they have to wait perhaps for hours in front of the operating room until it’s their turn. But they deal with it patiently, without complaining about the conditions. After all, it is an organized chaos, because the patient flow is so great.

Is the situation outside the hospital chaotic too?

My impression is that the situation in the countryside, especially in the mountainous regions, is not yet under control. In the last two days, our hospital organized shuttle flights by helicopter to very remote villages in the Langtang region. I have seen terrifying pictures. These villages have just disappeared. But our help could only be selective. I think there are still villages which no one has reached since the earthquake two weeks ago.

Do they still bring in injured people from these areas, or only dead?

In the mountain villages, most bodies were burned quickly in order to prevent epidemics. They still bring injured from mountain villages, but of course not as many as at the beginning.

Living in ruins

How do the people of Nepal assess their future?

Recently, someone told me that Nepal was set back by 20 years. I did not only stay in hospital but made some trips outside the city of Dhulikhel. The damage is incredible. I think it will definitely take years to rebuild the country. On the one hand you can feel a great cohesion of the Nepalese people. On the other hand they are all traumatized. Yesterday someone told me: “We suffer!”

Are the Nepalese afraid of getting forgotten, when the earthquake disaster will disappear from the news headlines?

From time to time I hear that. Otherwise, Nepal is popular throughout the world, not only because of its beautiful mountains, but mainly because of its nice people. There is a huge number of international aid agencies working in the earthquake zone, in some places almost too many. And so many individuals have come here in order to help the earthquake victims. I do not think that the Nepalese will be forgotten.

P.S. Matthias Baumann has launched a fundraising campaign for the earthquake victims in Nepal – like he did before for the families of the avalanche victims 2014 on Everest.

The Potala Palace in Lhasa

China shows its friendly face. For 10 May, the Chinese government is planning “to provide a charter flight free of charge form Lhasa to Kathmandu for all Sherpas – not just for Climbing Sherpas, but also for cooks and kitchen helpers”, Ralf Dujmovits wrote to me calling it “a generous gesture” – despite  the expected propaganda of the Chinese. The most successful German mountaineer arrived in Lhasa, like many other western climbers who were on expedition in Tibet. “The China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) generously bears the costs of transport to Lhasa, accommodation and meals. And they take care of the visa formalities for the stranded climbers coming from all Tibetan peaks”, the 53-year-old said. The land route from Tibet to Nepal is still blocked nine days after the devastating earthquake. Since yesterday, Chinese helpers are trying to clear the damaged road from the Nepalese border village Kodari to Kathmandu, using heavy equipment.

Boulders as large as rooms

ABC on the north side of Everest before China closed the mountain

Originally, Ralf wanted to climb Everest from the north without bottled oxygen, along with the Canadian climber Nancy Hansen. When the earth shook in Nepal, they were just above Chinese Base Camp at 5,200 meters. “We ran for our lives, when boulders as big as rooms crashed down from the moraine hills”, Ralf wrote. Four days later, when the Chinese authorities finally closed all Tibetan mountains because they considered the risk of further quakes to be too great, Ralf and Nancy were already in the Advanced Base Camp (ABC) at 6,400 meters. Then they returned immediately. “The probably best way to describe our and my own mood is calling it ‘emptiness’”, says Ralf. “Thousands of people have died on both sides of the Himalayan main ridge, tens of thousands are homeless, and those who survived are facing great distress and incalculable misery. Thus Nancy and I don’t want to breathe a single word about disappointment. We had hopes and dreams – and primarily we escaped with our lives (on the north side of Everest).” Dominik Mueller, head of the German expedition operator Amical alpin, reported on Facebook that a big avalanche released from the North Col on Saturday: “It was right to cancel all activities.”

Still many missing

Dujmovits and Hansen are going to fly from Lhasa to Kathmandu. Ralf wants to see for himself the scale of the damage in Sindhupalchowk district which is located in the east of the Nepalese capital. Along with the German aid organisation “Nepalhilfe Beilngries”, he had founded two schools in the area a few years ago. “Reportedly they either were severely damaged or destroyed”, Ralf wrote. This region, including the Langtang National Park, was hit by the earthquake particularly hard. To date, the Nepalese government has registered more than 2,800 dead in the district. Several hundred people are still missing. Among them are numerous trekking tourists, also from Germany. Overall, the death toll in Nepal has been rising to more than 7,300.