KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday expressed her wish to visit Nepal to oversee the rescue operations for woman mountaineer Chhanda Gayen, who had gone missing since Tuesday.
Mamata on Friday held a meeting with Nepal Consul General Chandra Ghimire here and expressed her desire to visit Nepal from where the rescue operations were being conducted by the Nepal Army.
After scaling Kanchenjunga on Monday, Chhanda Gayen along with two other sherpas went ahead to conquer the Yalungkang peak.
The three-member team went missing after an avalanche struck them at a height of 27,000 feet in the Himalayas and the state government approached the Nepal government through the Ministry of External Affairs. Nepal Army helicopters had made several sorties over the last two days, but because of cloud cover after the avalanche and inclement weather, they could not make any headway.
Bad weather conditions on Friday hampered efforts to rescue missing West Bengal mountaineer Chhanda Gayen, an official said. The 35-year-old ace mountaineer Gayen has been missing since Tuesday after she was caught in an avalanche on the Kanchenjunga peak. Gayen is the second civilian woman from West Bengal to scale Mount Everest.
“The rescue efforts could not be launched today (Friday) due to bad weather,” Col. Gulshan, principal, Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, HMI, said. The official was in touch with the Nepal authorities helping the rescue operation.