Mahesh Paudyal
As soon as we hear of Sherpas, it has become customary for most of us to say they are members of a ‘mountaineering tribe’. Very few of us know that before their adaptability to high altitude and their usefulness is mountaineering was ‘discovered’ by Western explorers like Charles Granville Bruce and Alexander Mitchell Kellas, the Sherpas were cattle herders and growers of potatoes and scanty millets in the highlands. Viewed this way, mountaineering is their newfound profession brought and foisted by European reconnoiters and climbers. As for themselves, the mountains are abodes of gods, and they are banned by their lamas from climbing. Nevertheless, they climb for reasons, one of them being the economic imperatives aggravated by very limited opportunities for other kinds of jobs in the highly inhospitable hinterlands. And each time they do, they perform appeasement rituals and rites of apologies, while their families light butter lamps in the name of their deities until they are back home, safe.
Much of what is said about Sherpas has come from Western researchers and writers. As a result, the Sherpas’ original voice in relation to mountaineering is largely unheard.
Sherpa: Stories of Life and Death from the Forgotten Guardians of Everest (2021) by Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari is a comprehensive delivery of a rare kind that peeks into the mountains of woes and tragedies Sherpas have endured to make Everest one of the most sensational industries of the world. At a time when Sherpas’ original say about mountaineering has remained nothing but a fuzzy speculation, the duo have stolen the answers right from the Sherpa summiteers, guides, porters and their family members, including widows and children scattered in Khumbu, Makalu, Rowaling and Darjeeling.
It is true that there have been a few works by Sherpa writers themselves. Ang Tharkay’s Sherpa: The Memoir of Ang Tharkay (1954), Tenzing Norgay’s Tiger of the Snows (1955), Jamling Tenzing Norgay’s Touching My Father’s Soul (2001), Judy and Tashi Tenzing’s Tenzing and the Sherpas of Everest (2001) Lhakpa Phuti Sherpa’s Forty Years in the Mountains (2016), Lakpa Dendi Sherpa’s Himalayan Maverick (2023), Mingma Dorjee Sherpa’s Sagarmathako Sherpa Ma (2023) and Lakpa Sonam Sherpa’s Himbu (2023) are some of them. Scholarship about the Sherpas construed so far was based either on memoirs by Western writers, or on a few research works by scholars like Christoph Von Furer-Haimendorf, Michael Oppitz and Sherry B. Ortners. The limitation of this corpus is that the works by the Sherpa authors are reflections of personal sides of the stories, and those by foreign writers lack the perspective of the natives. This gap has been fantastically mitigated by Bashyal and Adhikari, who have fished the stories out of the lips of the original stakeholders, not only from one location but from almost every nook of the Sherpaland, and from people of various generations, ranging from 90 plus Kanchha Sherpa, to 19 year old Lhakpa Sherpa. This way, the book archives original voices of the Sherpas, and reliably the book foregrounds the Sherpa perspective of mountaineering. In my estimation, this the first serious academic work aimed at unearthing the Sherpa perspective of the enterprise.
The book gives a comprehensive picture of the Everest climbing routes, both from the southern and the northern sides. The readers can vividly visualize the major landmarks: Base Camp, Khumbu Glacier, Camp 1, Camp 2, Western Cwm, Khumbu Icefall, Camp 3, Lhotse Face, Yellow Bank, Geneva Spur, Camp 4, Balcony, South Summit, Hillary Step and the Summit, and similar other points from the northern side. Below Base Camp, they can familiarize themselves with major stop points for trekkers: Lukla, Phakding, Tengboche, Pangboche, Lobuche, Pheriche, Thukla, Lobuche, Gorakshep and the Base Camp along the regular trekking route, and several other locations in Rowaling and Makalu regions. It also explains in detail the contours, environmental dynamics, glacial conditions, temperature, snow-ice realities, oxygen concentration and the gradient of the slopes of these locations. Thus, anyone having interest in the geography of the climbing can have a clear-cut idea of the corridor, including its thrills and threats.
The core of the book comprises of first-hand experiences of the Sherpas narrated in their own words. With all the pain and trouble, the authors have travelled to remote locations in the mountains where their informants have their roots, and have recorded their stories in their nascent forms. It is not difficult for anyone who has the slightest idea of the geography of our mountains to surmise the degree of pain one needs to take to physically walk to remote locations like Namche Bazaar, Phortse, Thame, Khumjung, Darjeeling, Rolwaling, Nurbuchaur, etc.
Unfolding several unheard-of episodes of the life of pioneering climbers like Tenzing Norgay, the authors have also brought to limelight, perhaps for the first time, the background stories of several names taken with reverence by the alpine fraternity of the world. They include veterans from the first successful climbing expedition like Kanchha Sherpa and nonagenarian climber Sirdar Mingma Chhiring Sherpa, witnesses to the rise of the climbing enterprise, the Sherpas’ migration to Darjeeling, their struggle to win the favor of the British recruiters, and their maiden advents into the mountains. Next, the authors transcribe the stories, voices and perspectives of the record-making summiteers like Tendi Sherpa, Babu Chiri Sherpa, Apa Sherpa, Lakpa Rita Sherpa, Kami Rita Sherpa, Mingma David Sherpa, Kushang Dorjee Sherpa, Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa, Dawa Finjhok Sherpa and several others. They also document the behind-the-curtain story of Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, the circumstances under which she summited, and the gory story of her demise. Lakpa Phuti Sherpa, a member of Pasang Lhamu’s climbing squad narrates the hair-raising story to the authors.
The book devotes several pages to unplug the individual stories of the rise, struggle, success, and in some cases retirement or even death of these master-climbers. On occasions, it also dedicates sections to document the voices of the parents, spouses, children and relatives of these climbers to understand their viewpoints.
The book leads the readers to some unthought-of inferences. First, it reveals that mountaineering was never a choice or passion for most of the Sherpas; it was a pull that promised to be a better alternative to their routine job of farming and cattle-rearing in the highlands. Second, it promised better income to sustain their families. Most the Sherpa summiteers reach the top not as registered climbers but as attendants of foreign summiteers. Most of them limit themselves to locations below the death zone, working as cooks and porters. Their eyes are neither on records nor the accolades or celebrity thereof; they look for chances to be hired again on account of being a summiteer, and thus make more money for their families.
The work foregrounds the fact that most of the Sherpa parents do not want to see their children plunging themselves into this risky business; instead, they want the younger generation to look for other professions. One classic case is that of Phurba Tashi, a 21-time Everest summiteer, and a member of the expeditions of Marco Siffredi and David Tait. In spite of such stunning success records, he never let his old parents know he was climbing. He retired after 2015 earthquake, his parents still having no clue what he had been doing all those years. None of his kids is into climbing. His eldest son is studying to become a Buddhist monk in the Tengboche monastery, and his twin sons, one of whom wants to become a footballer, are studying in Kathmandu. Apa, also known as the Super Sherpa has two sons and a daughter, and none is in mountaineering business. “The elder son,” the authors reveal, “is an accountant; the younger one a civil engineers, and the daughter a nurse.” This is indicative of the apathy the climbing veterans have for their life-long vocation, and the drift that characterizes the career choice of the younger generation Sherpas. Even Sirdar Migmna, the father of Lhakpa Rita and Kami Rita says, “It’s good that Lkhapa Rita has quit climbing. I want Kami to do the same…”
To slip into the generalization that the Sherpas are a mountaineering tribe, and climbing comes naturally to them as do leaves on trees will be a gross mistake. They were dragged into the task by Westerners, and the drag was fuelled by the hard economic realities of Khumbu. Their limited place-ballet in the roadless Himalayas, with their herds of cattle and measures of crops have made them adept in the highlands, and this topography-induced adaptation hurled them into mountaineering.
“This struggle for survival, limited education and lack of opportunities in the outside world, magnified again by the social prestige associated with climbing Everest, are the prevailing sociological conditions that lead Sherpas like Apa to Everest year after year, generation after generation,” say the authors, summing up the entire dynamics.
There also are a few stories that need to be individually treated. Why Furdiki Sherpa of Dingboche and Nima Doma of Khumjung climbed Everest is altogether a different question. Their husbands were high altitude workers, and they both died while in work. Their widows, Furdiki and Nima, climbed to fulfil their husbands’ unfulfilled promises, and in way to follow the paths of their departed souls. A few others climb as a result of their attachment to the place, the peaks, and the deities there. Thus, emotions, spiritual stories, place attachment and place identities offer other windows to explain, at least partly, why some of the Sherpas climb peaks, and stay clung to the mountains.
Thus, the book reaches out to the core of the climbing community and reports directly from their lips what it takes to become a climber. The risk, the worry at home, the uncertainty up there, the overpowering and invincible demeanors of nature, and the meager return of the climbing season — all cumulate to make what the authors called ‘stories of life and death’ of Sherpas. About 250 dollars in each ascent up to the summit cannot be an answer as to why a Sherpa climbs; there is much more underneath the story, and one has to explore the affective, cognitive and behavioral dimensions of their being in the mountain to comprehend the holistic picture of climbing.
The authors deserve great commendation for such a painstaking feat that is at once enlightening and educating. The book, in my view, is a must-read, not only for climbing and trekking enthusiasts but also for everyone with some degree of inclination for sociological, anthropological, ecological, spiritual and economic understanding of the Himalayas. A rare delivery indeed.
Sherpa: Stories of Life and Death from the Forgotten Guardians of Everest
Authors: Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari
Publisher: Casssel, UK (2022)
[Reviewer Paudyal is Assistant Professor at the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University.]
