The Nepali and Chinese sides of the Everest region were closed to tourism due to unseasonally heavy snow, and a helicopter crashed in deep snowdrifts as it tried to rescue stranded trekkers.
Visited by thousands of trekkers and climbers, the region around Mount Everest has been blanketed by snow since Monday as a cyclone from the Bay of Bengal churned across India, ushering in a second bout of severe snowfall in the Himalayas this month.
