The Everest Test

Two teams completed the highest ever cricket match today, raising more than £250,000 for the charities The Himalayan Trust UK and The Lord’s Taverners. Team Hilary and Team Tenzig played out a Twenty/20 game on a frozen lake near Gorak Shep at an altitude of 5,165m. The match which was won by Team Hilary by 36 runs set a world record for a field sport played at the highest altitude. The Nokia Maps Everest Test was inspired two years ago when expedition leader Richard Kirtley, 29, noticed that Gorak Shep, the highest plateau of its size in the world, bore a striking resemblance to the Oval cricket ground. http://www.theeveresttest.com/ http://www.atestabovetherest.com/

Another attempt at Sagarmatha

Gareth Bate is making his fifth attempt to climb Everest. His main aim is to raise money for the charity Moving Mountains, which he set up in 2001 and which is run from Northern Ireland. The charity helps build schools, hospitals and monasteries in both Nepal and Kenya and has helped street children and their families. Climbing Mount Everest four times has enabled him to raise an estimated £550,000 for the charity. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7986153.stm

UK increases Nepal poverty cash

Britain has said that it is increasing its aid programme to fight poverty in Nepal by nearly 50% over the next three financial years. It says the funds will be used to reduce poverty in one of Asia's poorest countries and will also bolster the peace process in the Himalayan country. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7979890.stm

Kathmandu International Film Festival

Last week in Kathmandu film fans and film makers gathered for the annual Kathmandu International Film Festival. For the last eight years, the festival has attracted not only filmmakers, film enthusiasts, and critics, but also scholars, journalists, activists, and mountaineers. It is the interest of this creative and intellectual community that has sustained KIMFF and placed Kathmandu Valley on the map of international film festivals. The festival is organised by the Himal Association and the KIMFF started as a non-competitive, biennial festival in 2000. This event was the sixth festival. http://www.kimff.org/index.php

The climate change blame game

An interesting article on climate change and Nepal.

A delay in helping Nepal to prepare a crucial plan to adapt to climate change has led to accusations between two international organisations that they are not doing enough to get the job done in many developing countries.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7775518.stm

Truro dentist returns from epic trip to Nepal

A Truro dentist has described his "amazing experience" in a remote and primitive village in Nepal, when patients queued up to have their teeth examined and treated for the first time in their lives. Mark was in a group of five dentists based for ten days at Nalang, in Nepal's Dharding province. His "surgery" was an unheated school classroom and his dentist's chair was a pupil's wooden chair, made higher with a base of bricks. http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/truro/3951422.Truro_dentist_returns_from_epic_trip_to_Nepal/

UN provides $3m for rural communities in Nepal

The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has allocated 3 million U.S. dollars to assist rural communities in Nepal, according to a release issued by the UN body on Thursday. In 2008, Nepal received a total of 12.6 million dollars from the CERF in four different allocations to provide humanitarian assistance in response to the Koshi floods, flooding and landslides in the mid and far-western regions, the food crisis, and other urgent humanitarian needs. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/04/content_10457224.htm