About 2,000 foreign hikers have been trapped in bad weather on the slopes of a mountain near Mount Everest in a remote corner of Nepal for the past four days, officials said on Friday.
They have been forced to stay in the small hill resort of Lukla, the gateway to Mount Everest, which has been covered by thick clouds this week, forcing airlines to cancel flights to and from the remote region.
Lukla, which lies at a height of 2,800 metres (9,186 feet), is located 125 km (78 miles) northeast of the Nepali capital.
Tens of thousands of trekkers and climbers visit the Solukhumbu region in northeast Nepal, home to Mount Everest, every year. Many start and end their trek from the windswept resort where a small airstrip is carved into the rugged mountainside. Utsav Raj Kharel, chief of Lukla’s Tenzing Hillary Airport, said tourists, who were not in physical danger, had been waiting for their flights back to Kathmandu for the past four days.
