Everest To Get Internet Cafe...

Further evidence that the world is going bonkers with news on ananova that an internet cafe is due to open close to Everest this March.

Tsering Gyaltsen Sherpa, 32 is apparently set to open the cafe at 5,300 metres 'on the Khumbu Glacier' - well, presumably not actually on the Khumbu Glacier, but close to it - if the altitude quoted is correct, that would put it somewhere in the upper Khumbu valley, though below Everest base Camp itself.

The idea is that expeditions will be asked to pay around £660 for use of the internet facility operating through a transmitter located some 300 metres higher 'up the slope'. Money raised will reportedly go towards the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, a group which aims to clean climbing debris from the slopes of Everest every year.

Expeditions in the past have tended to use their own connections via satellite phone, while an internet cafe in Namche Bazzar, several days trek down the valley, was destroyed by Maoist insurgents in the summer of 2001. That cafe charged for e-mails per byte leading to masterpieces of brevity and abbreviation as trekkers tried desperately to save money.

With this year being the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest, you can expect to see an awful lot of coverage in the news very, very soon and we promise to bring you a selection of it. For direct expedition coverage, and believe us, there are going to be a lot of it going on, the best source we've found is the established everestnews.com web site.