Bringing the dead down from Mount Everest is a dangerous and costly mission

Dawa at Mount Manaslu, Nepal, in this undated photo. He was part of a team that brought down a body of a hiker who died on Mount Everest. Photos: dpa

Dawa Finjhok Sherpa and his teammates hashed out a retrieval plan as they stood surrounding a dead body deep in the Himalayas one early morning in May 2017.

It had been around a year since Indian climber Goutam Ghosh, a 50-year-old police officer from Kolkata, died near the summit of Mount Everest.

His face had turned pitch black, his body as hard as the rock next to it.