Bahrain team led by Prince conquer new heights of Mt Everest

Kathmandu: The Bahrain Royal Guard team led by Prince Mohammed Hamad Mohammed Al Khalifa became the first international team to conquer the new altitude of Mount Everest.

The 16 member Bahrain Royal Guard team, which is a unit of the Bahrain Defence force successfully reached the peak of Mt Everest early morning today.

The team stood atop the peak between 5:30 am and 6:45 am local time, said Mingma Sherpa, chairman at Seven Summit Treks which organised the expedition.

The team had arrived in Kathmandu on March 15 to begin its Everest expedition.

Mira Acharya, Director at the Department of Tourism declared this to be the first international team to conquer the new altitude of Mount Everest.

In December last year, Nepal and China had jointly announced that the revised height of the world's highest peak was 8,848.86 metres, which is about 86 centimetres more than the previous measurement done by India in 1954.

The Nepal government decided to measure the exact height of the mountain amid debates that there might have been a change in it due to various reasons, including the devastating earthquake of 2015.

Climbing leader Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, who is the youngest person to climb Everest without oxygen support in 2013, said the team members are now descending from the top.

The team earlier successfully climbed Lobuche peak (6,119 metres) and Mt Manaslu (8,156 metres) -- both in Nepal -- in October 2020.