Gurkhas On Everest

Just how terrifying must it have been to have been caught on Everest early on Saturday morning when the Nepal earthquake struck? We’re about to hear from one man who can tell us because he was there with a team of Gurkhas.

Their story centres on commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the Brigade of Gurkhas’ service to the crown. A team has been on Everest over recent weeks with the intention of scaling it and putting a Gurkha on it’s summit for the first time. That team was at Base Camp just hours before disaster struck and they would almost certainly have perished if they’d not made their move up the mountain earlier in the day.

Major Andrew Todd is second-in-command of the team and he’s been recounting the events of that morning for BFBS’s Richard Hatch. They spoke via satellite phone.