World’s Highest Skydive Landing

After three skydivers landed on Gorakshep, it became famous as the world´s highest landing point for skydivers. On September 22, three professional sky divers jumped from an altitude of 20,000 ft (some 6,000 meters) and landed on Gorakshep making it the highest landing point. Gorakshep is located in the Everest region at an altitude of 5,164 meters.

Abhishek Panday, the skydiving coordinator of Himalayan Expeditions said, “Gorakshep is the highest point in the world that skydivers have landed on. Two professional skydivers from Britain and one from India successfully made the parachute descent on Tuesday.” Himalayan Expedition was the organizer of the event and it also organizes other adventure sports activities like the Tenzing-Hillary Everest Marathon. The event was also supported by the Adventure Sports Tourism Society of Nepal.

Leo Dickinson (British), Ralph Mitchell (British) and Ramesh Chandra Tripathi (Indian) made the jump in the south side of Mt. Everest on Tuesday morning consecutively.

“With a free fall timing of around five to six seconds, all touched the ground at four minutes. All three have returned to Kathmandu and are physically fit,” the organizers said in a statement.

All of the skydivers are highly qualified professionals. Dickinson and Mitchell have done over 4,000 jumps while Tripathi has done over 3,000 jumps.

The main purpose of the jump was to test whether it is safe so as to catch the attention of more skydivers to Nepal during the 2011 Nepal Tourism Year.