Should Everest be Closed? Asks The Guardian

I have hopes of trekking to the Everest Base Camp in the near future. We thought of going there in 2005 but the unrest in Nepal and the cost of the trip made us hesitate and we went to Ladakh instead. But I am not so sure if it is a good idea to go there.

I read this article in The Guardian that how tourism explosion is damaging the region. It made me pause and think. I usually never associate any negatives with traveling but that may not be true.

It has been described as the highest junkyard in the world. Covered in discarded mountaineering detritus and suffering under thousands of tourists' boots every year, environmental groups are to launch a push for a radical solution - the temporary closure of the world's highest mountain.

Warnings that an ecological disaster is imminent in the area around the mountain have largely been ignored amid years of turmoil in Nepal. But conservationists think that growing political stability in the Himalayan kingdom means that the time has come and that the damage caused every year by thousands of climbers and tourists can no longer be ignored.