Kathmandu, April 5: Dawa Yangji Sherpa fear taxi drivers in Kathmandu than to climb Mt Everest.

Dawa says, “Sagarmatha is innocent, it does not cheat anybody. It is beautiful and I don’t fear it much. But I wish to remain away from Kathmandu and the its drivers.”

A team of Dawa Mingma Yangji Sherpa, Dolma Sherpa and Kesang Diki Sherpa led by Lakpa Sherpa is departing here soon after receiving a national flag from the Prime Minister.

Born 21 years ago in Solukhumbu, Ms. Dawa had come to Kathmandu two years ago. She had opened a tea shop with the money taken from her own parents at the age of 16 at a small village in Solu. With the money earned from the shop, she paid off the loans her parents had taken.

Talking to RSS, she said, “Kathmandu allured me when I heard the stories of its glamour from my friends.

When asked how she felt upon arriving here, Ms. Dawa added, “Kathmandu is always enveloped with the blankets of smoke. Everywhere vehicles are seen plying on the roads. I found no faces familiar to me. In fact, Solu is much more beautiful than Kathmandu”

When I first arrived here, I took a taxi at Naxal for Mitra Park. I could not guess where the taxi driver was taking me. When I asked why it took so much time to reach my place, he said to my astonishment, “you seem to be a newcomer. I will make a round for you.”

“I took off my ear rings and put it inside my pockets. Then, he proposed marriage to me,” she further said.

Dilli Bazaar girls campus organised a reception in honour of a mountaineers expedition team here today.

CPN-UML standing committee member Ishwor Pokhrel said courage of these five women shows that if there is a strong willpower there is nothing that cannot be achieved.

Former speaker Damannath Dhungana spoke of the need for Nepal to take leadership of mountaineering tourism.

Chairman of the Sushma Memorial Trust Sujata Koirala which sponsored the programme, campus chief Ram Prasad Dahal and others also expressed their views at the function chaired by MP Homnath Dahal.