Where the action really is

The article excerpted below hightlights a point Jan Cox made. That processing is necessary for the human brain to assign a meaning to anything.

Matt Dickinson, author of the Mortal Chaos series and one of the Brits who has reached the summit of Mount Everest, offered a surprising insight into life on top of the world once when we met. He said: "When you get up to the very top of Mount Everest there is a remarkable amount of rubbish that has been left behind - old rope, discarded oxygen cylinders, broken tents, beer cans and bottles."

A group of artists have now turned eight tonnes of this trash - including the remains of a helicopter - into works of art and sculpture to highlight the issue of littering on the slopes of Everest. It took 65 porters and 75 yaks to carry down the rubbish from the mountain over two Spring expeditions.

The exhibition of 75 pieces commissioned for the 'Everest 8848 Art Project' is on display in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu before it moves to Pokhara next week.

Project organiser Kripa Rana Shahi said: "We thought that this would help promote the artists as well as contribute to making Everest clean. We were happy to get the trash and (the waste collectors) were happy to get rid of it."

Fifteen Nepalese artists spent a month preparing pieces for the exhibition. In one of the works, by painter and poet Sunita Rana, white shards of aluminium from drinks cans are fashioned into medals signifying the bravery of mountaineers, while black metal tent poles are transformed into a wind chime

Jan's point was that a sincere quester would look NOT the "to" or the "fro", of living, but the inbetween. Not the Everest peak, or Kathmandu, but the trip itself.