Sherpa families' sorrow after killer Everest avalanche

Menuka Magar-Gurung is struggling to come to with what happened on that bright, sunny morning.

Her husband, 29-year-old Aash Bahadur Gurung, was one of the Sherpa climbing guides caught up when a huge mass of snow suddenly gave way a few hundred metres above Everest Base Camp as they prepared for the climbing season.

"I still feel he's alive," the 25-year-old told the BBC, struggling to control her tears as she carried her 10-month-old son, Anish Gurung.

"Before going to Everest, he said it was his last time to work as a guide.

"He wanted to go to America. He wanted to make some money and make our lives better."

Sixteen Sherpas lost their lives on 18 April in what has been described by many as modern mountaineering's deadliest single tragedy. Three of them have not been found and are presumed dead.

Since the avalanche, more than 300 international climbers have abandoned their plans to scale Mount Everest - the world's highest mountain at 8,848m (29,029ft), which straddles the border between China and Nepal.

Nepal's tourism and mountaineering authorities have been left high and dry.

Anita Lama, 23, is the widow of Asman Tamang, 26, who also died on the mountain.

"I never thought that such a tragedy would happen," she told the BBC, her eyes welling up as she carried her daughter, 11-month-old Dolma Tamang.

"He started going to the mountains for work for the past four years or so.

"Before the accident he said he would come back after two months. He was planning to build our own house after a couple of years."

After the disaster struck, the Nepali government announced a compensation and insurance package worth about $15,000 (£8,800) to the families of the Sherpa climbers.

But the families and friends of those killed were not satisfied.

Nimi Sherpa, who is a climber herself and an aunt of Phurba Ongyal Sherpa, 25, who also died in the avalanche, said the government had insulted the country's climbing community by initially announcing compensation worth merely $400 (£238).

"We are being treated like beggars," she said.

"We were treated miserably in the past, too, that's why many Sherpas have left the country."

Nepal's Himalayan Sherpa people are believed to have migrated from eastern Tibet centuries ago, and their population in Nepal currently stands at just over 112,000, according to Nepal's Population and Housing Census 2011.

The term "Sherpa" is now widely used to identify a climbing guide, and not all come from the ethnic Sherpa community of Solukhumbu, the district where Mount Everest is located.

According to the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), around 9,000 Sherpas are engaged in mountaineering working as guides and climbing aides, and they make between $5,000 (£3,000) and $7,000 each climbing season - several times higher than the average Nepali income.

But the job is fraught with risks and there is no proper official social security arrangements, senior Sherpas say, so thousands have chosen to migrate to greener pastures.

Many have gone to America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and others to neighbouring India.

After the avalanche, Nepal's tourism and mountaineering officials were unable to persuade the 300 international climbers at the Everest Base Camp to continue climbing.

"All climbers have packed up and left the base camp by now," Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the NMA, told the BBC.

"But the expedition plans from the Chinese side of the mountain are on."

In recent years, Nepal's tourism ministry has been earning an annual sum of more than $3m (£1.7m) from the climbers heading to Mount Everest alone.

After the disaster on 18 April, officials decided to extend the permits issued this year for five years. They also announced better rescue and security measures for mountaineers.

As well as the security measures, the government announced education and welfare benefits for the families of those Sherpas killed.

But 77-year-old Nima Sherpa, who lost her youngest son, Ang Kaji Sherpa, 37, in the avalanche, is still worried that her six grandchildren may suffer.

"He went to the Himal [mountain] to make money, earn daily bread for the family, build a house. Now who will do that">