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KATHMANDU - NEPAL plans to rename the airport that serves as the gateway to Mount Everest after Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary, who died last week, the country's tourism minister said on Tuesday.
'I will ask the government for approval to rename Lukla airport as the Hillary-Tenzing Airport,' Tourism Minister Prithvi Subba Gurung said at a condolence ceremony for Hillary held in Kathmandu on Tuesday.
Mr Hillary and Mr Norgay made history in May 1953 when they became the first to summit the 8,848-metre peak, the world's highest.
Around 150 members of the tourism business community attended the ceremony in Kathmandu on Tuesday, where a picture of Mr Hillary was draped with white silk scarves as Hindu priests blew conch shells and Burgundy-robed Buddhist monks played traditional drums and trumpets.
Set up with help from Hillary's Himalayan Trust in 1964, Lukla airport, 140 kilometres north-east of Kathmandu, is one of the busiest in the country during the spring and autumn trekking and mountaineering seasons.
Some 20 flights per day, carrying people and equipment, land on the sloping airstrip in the foothills of Everest, saving days of walking.
After the historic Everest ascent, Mr Hillary continued to assist Sherpas in the Solokhumbu region at the base of Mount Everest, and the Sherpa community have been mourning the loss of their 'second father.'
As well as helping the Sherpas, Mr Hillary was instrumental in helping establish impoverished Nepal as a trekking destination.
'We will follow in the footsteps set by Mr Hillary to promote Alpine tourism and keep the mountain environment clean,' the minister said. -- AFP
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