Bahraini expedition team, led by Prince Al Khalifa, sets eyes on Mt Everest summit

Kathmandu, March 16

A 16-member mountaineering team, led by Bahraini Prince Shaikh Mohamed Hamad Mohamed Al Khalifa, has arrived in Nepal with eyes fixed on the Mt Everest summit, according to a media report.

Al Khalifa and his team landed at the Tribhuvan International Airport here on Monday on an aircraft of the Bahrain Defence Force, The Himalayan Times reported, quoting an official of Seven Summits Trek, the travel agency organising the royal expedition.

The group will shift to Lukla, a small town near the base of Mt Everest, in late March and begin the final expedition in the second week of May. The group will stay in Nepal for a total of 80 days.

First, the team will have to quarantine at the Marriot Hotel here for a week, as part of COVID-19 safety protocols, the daily reported. After the isolation period, each member will have to take the Polymerase Chain Reaction test.

In the group, 13 members are officers in the Bahrain Defence Force. The rest are British nationals.

The group is carrying 2,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, to inoculate the residents of Chumanubri Rural Municipality-1 in Gorkha district, the newspaper said.

The same team, last year, had successfully scaled Lobuche and Manaslu peaks in Nepal. PTI