High life in the death zone of the forgotten guardians of Everest

Sherpas have come a long way. A new book explores the tenuous link between their lives and livelihood

Sherpa: Stories of Life and Death from the Forgotten Guardians of Everest

Author: Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari

Publisher: Hachette

Pages: 321

Price: Rs 699 

Readers of this paper will encounter the term “sherpa” in the context of the myriad economic and geo-political summits. These sherpas play consequential roles as representatives of their heads of government in staking out negotiating positions for agreements signed at summit ceremonials. The role of such sherpas — in lower case — is a hat-tip to the stalwart Sherpas, a community of Tibetan origin that settled in Nepal centuries ago and became famous as facilitators for Himalayan mountaineers. 

Despite the superficial functional similarities, the two varieties of enablers could not differ more. Certainly, no one is likely to chronicle the efforts of the lower-case variety, whereas this tiny community of just 150,000 people has been the subject of three major books, including the one under review.

The Sherpas’ world changed radically in 1953 after Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first man to summit the world’s highest peak with the New Zealand bee-keeper Edmund Hillary. Since then, summiting Everest became the goal of every mountaineer worth his or her crampons and now figures on the bucket list of moneyed adventure tourists. The Himalayas are also home to the world’s 14 highest peaks. Sherpas, living in their shadow, have become the default and indispensable enablers of global mountaineering ambitions.

Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari’s book tells the story of this transformation, from Sherpas’ earliest days as “coolies”, porters and kitchen boys who risked their hard-scrabble lives for meagre pay-outs from competitive European expeditions between the 1920 and 1990s to the relatively affluent businesspeople of today. In describing them as “forgotten guardians of Everest”, the authors remind us of the worth of these mostly unacknowledged enablers behind those triumphal headlines of this or that person summiting Everest each year.

In the burgeoning commercial climbing industry, Sherpas earn handsomely as owners of trekking and guiding companies, with offices in the US and elsewhere, charging anything up to $120,000 to guide specialists and amateurs to the world’s highest peaks. Almost every year, as this book chronicles, they set astonishing records: Ang Rita, who summited Everest 10 times without supplemental oxygen, Kami Rita Sherpa, who summited Everest 26 times, Babu Chiri Sherpa, who set a record in 1999 by spending 21 hours on the summit of Everest…

This book is also an infinitely more optimistic portrait of the Sherpas than Jonathan Neale’s seminal Tigers of the Snow  (2002), the first major history of this community. Mr Neale’s somewhat angry book chronicles the cruel and cavalier treatment of Sherpas — and other locals — by European military-style expeditions. He records in dismaying detail how the sahibs stayed in tents and had warm clothing and hot food whereas the vast cohorts of supporting porters and coolies, who did the grunt work carrying enormous loads to stock high altitude camps, had to fend for themselves outside in the snow on rations that barely touched 1,300 calories. Tigers…  focuses on the disastrous German 1934 expedition to Nanga Parbat during which Sherpas were simply abandoned to their fate.      

Mr Neale argued that the tragedies of that failed expedition encouraged Sherpas to equip themselves with greater mountaineering expertise as much for their own safety as to enhance their bargaining powers in the European nationalist race to summit Everest because, as George Mallory famously said, “it’s there”. That was an ambition Sherpas do not fully comprehend; Himalayan peaks remain sacred for them. No matter, the sahibs’ desires to “conquer” nature meant earning a livelihood beyond their traditional ones as pastoralists, agriculturalists and small-time traders

Messrs Bashyal and Adhikari have put in the hard yards to provide this entertainingly written Sherpa history, interviewing a wide cast of legends in the business and making awesomely arduous treks to villages located between 2,000 and 5,000 metres to bring to readers the strange contradictions between Sherpas’ professional lives in a high-tech global village and their remote rural roots. The majority of Sherpa settlements at higher altitudes, the authors write, are not connected to any roads system. As a result “even today, many Sherpas get to fly in tiny airplanes and helicopters before they… even see a road vehicle.” 

Several things stand out from this absorbing chronicle. First, contrary to common perception, Sherpas don’t have inborn climbing abilities. Like professional mountaineers, they too had to learn. In the early days they learnt the hard way; today, many attend climbing school. Now, with “years and years of practice and experience, ‘climbing’ to Sherpas becomes what ‘football’ is to Ronaldo and Messi,” the authors write. The latter two ply their trade in far safer environments. The Sherpas live a high life of great peril. 

Second, despite their affluent lifestyles — many of them live overseas or have children studying there — the community is solidly grounded, retaining strong roots in their home villages, often bankrolling health and schools there.

Third, the Sherpas embody the tenuous link between climate change and livelihoods. The scandalous litter and degradation of the region by the ever-increasing crowds that flock there each climbing season is one aspect. But melting glaciers presents a clear and present danger. The authors refer to a study this year that recorded that 50-55 metres of ice on the South Col glacier — the last major camp before the Everest summit — has disappeared in the past 25-30 years. This thinning out, which Sherpas had noticed long before, is exposing climbers to rocks that render crampons designed for snow and ice dangerously useless. This apart, increasingly frequent incidents of avalanches and earthquakes are turning the mountains into “instant graveyards” — those in 2014 and 2015 were horrific enough to prompt several Sherpas to quit mountaineering forever. But many others have little choice but to continue climbing — until, that is, the next natural disaster strikes.