The Nepalese village of Namche Bazar (subs correct) is filled with incessant clinking of metal against stone _ it is a sign of change. There is no rhythm to it. The clinks are an irregular background noise _ like a movie scene of prisoners in a quarry. But it is not made by prisoners, rather by the stonemasons of Namche Bazar _ a trading village in the Himalayan foothills, just below Mount Everest. It has been a trading centre for centuries as people have come and gone with their yaks through the Himalayan passes from Tibet bringing wool and carpets in return for butter and leather. Three events in the past 100 years have profoundly changed the village (and indeed the whole of the Sherpa highground) _ the last of which has caused all the clinking of stone. The first was the coming of the potato in the mid-nineteenth century which caused a doubling of the population because the potato has a far higher yield than the traditional buckwheat. The second was the subjugation of Tibet by China in the 1950s and the effective closing of the Nepal-Tibet border.
By doing it, the Chinese applied a religious tourniquet to the Sherpas of Nepal, cutting off the Buddhist Nepalese Sherpas from the great Buddhist monasteries to the north. It also caused a partial economic blockade. But the Sherpas are an patient, adaptable people. The passes to Tibet have been at least partially re-opened, even if Chinese repression in Tibet continues, and the Sherpas have taken economic advantage of the third change even if it has come at a cultural price. The third change began in earnest on May 29, 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa climbed Mount Everest. Of more immediate import than the conquest was what came in its wake _ a desire by many non-mountaineers to merely to see the mountain close up and a desire by others to climb both Everest and the other major peaks. The Hillary and subsequent expeditions brought with them large support crews, some locally engaged and some from abroad.
They may have hauled one or two climbers to the top, but they also carried tonnes of gear and brought hundreds of other people through the foothills _ usually walking days through Sherpa villages and grazing and terraced crop grounds. Now trekking is an industry. They come from the corners of the earth (or at least the affluent corners) to Kathmandu and along the walking paths towards the Everest base camp and key points in the high Himalaya. In the ensuing 40 years trekking has become easier, more commercialised and more popular. One view is that tourism is destroying Sherpa culture in the foothills and ruining the charm of Kathmandu _ in the way tourist almost universally destroy the very things they come to see. On the ground, however, it seems that, whatever the ghastliness of the tourist etho-junk markets in Kathmandu the Sherpas are adapting to, and legitimately profiting from, their new source of income. Earlier this month I joined a trek organised by the Australian company Peregrine. It began with a flight by a 16-seater aircraft from Kathmandu _ 150 kilometres north-east to Lukla, landing at what must be one of the world’s most precarious air strips. You wonder, as a aircraft flies just next to jagged, precipitous mountains, where and if it can land. The only comfort was that pilot’s white shirt and tie seemed to presume a lunch back in Kathmandu. All 16 passengers broke into spontaneous applause upon landing. The airstrip was built by Hillary in the 1960s to help the Sherpas.
It cut the trip from Kathmandu from a one day’s bus trip and a five-day walk to one hour’s flight. One might think it would bring the evil influences of the west with it and to an extent that is true _ lollies where there are few dentists and silly baseball hats. But Sherpas would prefer the medicines that come through the air strip at Lukla than taking their chance with natural causes, and given the choice many Sherpas are happy to abandon the straw carry basket for the convenience of a good nylon fibre-camping pack. Fortunately, the impact does not appear to have altered a unique blend of stoicism and humour that I saw in the Sherpas on a long trek five years ago, and again on the trek this month. One of our guides this month was Rinzin Sherpa.
Rinzin’s pack is almost part of him. It folds around his back and he walks as if it were not there. He is a squat man in his mid-50s though it is hard to tell his precise age at first. He wears 1950s style Dunlop tennis shoes _ through they are green worn and dirty. With each step they fold over the rocks on the precipitous path in the Himalayan foothills. Every step is light but sure. He also carries a first aid kit for the trekkers. They come from every affluent nation on earth in a magnetic ritual to see the world’s highest mountain _ Sagarmatha or Everest at 8,884 metres. There is no easy way. Even the really affluent who fly by helicopter to the Japanese-financed hotel on a hill called Syangboche, 20 kilometres from Mount Everest, run a grave risk. Syangboche is 3,760 metres above sea level, about the height that altitude sickness hits a fair portion of travellers. Indeed, several guests have failed in their venture _ dying of altitude sickness before they could be helicoptered out.
So it is better to walk slowly, acclimatising on the way. There is no better way than with Sherpa guides. Rinzin Sherpa gets up at 5am and starts boiling water for washing, supervises cooking, carries the medical bag and ensures no-one gets left behind. He hears every slip and looks around to check that no trekker has fallen to the river below. Nothing ruffles him. He never swears or frowns. But then he has not been to the city nor seen a car for eight years. He is, like nearly all Sherpas, a Buddhist. It means that when he sees a chorten _ a pile of rocks with prayers carved on them and/or flags with prayers written on them _ he must walk to its left. He does so religiously. He also carried the day-packs of tired trekkers in addition to his own and prepares hot washing water with iodine steriliser before every meal. Rinzin gets paid $10 a day. It has enabled him to buy a couple of calves to add to his small potato farm in the village of Benker where he lives in a two-room house with his wife Sona. His children, who unlike him have been taught to read and write, have grown up.
The house is made from local stone without mortar with a pine-slat roof. There is no glass or electricity. The smoke from the fire has blackened the inside of the roof and the beams, preserving them from insects. Only paths go through his village. There are no roads nor cars. We move on from Rinzin’s house along a now well-trodden track that leads from Lukla towards the Everest base camp. One day we stopped for lunch at a collection of stone houses and shops half a day’s walk from Namche Bazar.
In western countries at a roadside lunch stop, cars go by. The passers by are identified by the cars, Holdens, Fords, Toyotas and the like. Their real identity and the nature of the journey remains a mystery. Even those who stop remain anonymous. Further, the road and cars divide small highway towns. Whereas in the Himalayan foothills, there are no cars to conceal travellers nor roads to divide villages. A great procession of travellers passes _ their loads and dress revealing both purpose and destination. A small village theatre takes place. Monks returning from market on their way to the monastery at Thyangboche stop for a rest. Yak drivers pass headed for high altitude. Drivers of zopkios (a cross between yak and ox) _ which can tolerate more heat but less cold than yaks _ head for lower altitudes. People carry steel reinforcing for concrete, firewood, even glass windows, great steel struts for foot bridges, trekking gear, mountaineering gear, food, half a goat with a leg sticking out of a rucksack. Everything must be carried.
It is carried up, ever up, to sustain and shelter those who live high in the Himalayas and those who visit to climb, trek and see. The very business of carrying has expanded from satisfying local needs to satisfying the foreign trekkers. Film, beer, the ubiquitous Coke, rum, toilet paper, baked beans, rucksacks, climbing gear are carried ever upwards for those who want to see Everest or just enjoy the walking among the Sherpas in the foothills. It can be a hard testing climb but the good nature of the people, I can testify, melts the grimmest humour. Even some German trekkers laughed at my weakest pun on the trek. They were struggling along a steep section and to my “”hello” replied with a guttural “”Goot Morgan.” My words just popped out: “”God it must be hard climbing with those heavy German accents.” “”Hoor, Hoor, Hoor,” they gutteralled. But back to our lunch spot.
Suddenly there is a commotion. A youth has apparently stolen a gold necklace and when confronted thrown it down the steep slope. The police arrive and the youth is chained wrist and ankle pending an investigation. “”He’ll get three or five years in Kathmandu,” a Sherpa warns. They are still looking for the necklace and the youth remains chained when we leave. At Namche Bazar, the owner of the stone and pine tea-house, Nima Sherpa, tells us he had given over his small piece of flat potato ground to tents. It pays more. He gets $1 for 20kg of potatoes. Or 60c per tent per night per tent. Others are doing the same thing. Namche Bazar, built in a semi-circle of what would be steep land in Australia, is being pushed back into the hillside with more terracing and the building of more lodges from the local stone. The stone-masons’ clinking continues.
They have even run out of nearby stone. Boys aged between 14 and 20 have to walk several kilometres along steep paths to find stone and carry it back on crude wooden yokes on their backs. The size of village has more than doubled in Nima’s lifetime. Now more than half its 700 population dealing in tourist nick-nacks or trekking accommodation. Trekking is now a major foreign exchange earner. Indeed, in an exquisitely intangible way the Nepalese are exporting Mount Everest _ and good luck to them. It is probably better than having the IMF or some other interfering batch of international bureaucrats impose an export regime of cash crops. Besides, cash crops do not do well on the tiny terraced plots in the steep terrain. Everest is an export with an inelastic demand.
There is only one highest mountain in the world and Nepal has the best view and the best approach. China can’t compete with the view from the other side because of its repression and consequent restrictions in Tibet. Of course, not all approve, at least of the mountaineering side. On our trek we came across porters carrying television gear for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and commented among ourselves. “”Did someone mention Norway?” a voice asked. It may have been an extraordinary coincidence, but the voice belonged to Marit Kleppa, president of the Norway-Nepal Friendship Association, and opponent of the mountaineering expedition the NBC had come to film.
She happened to be trekking in the area, as she had done several times before. “”This climbing is just an ego trip,” she said. She told of how Norwegian climber Arne Ness had asked the Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Brudtland, what Norway got out of its $12 million aid to Nepal. “”Nothing,” was the reply. “”Then let them give us a mountain,” Ness said. Brutland later had a meeting with the Nepalese Prime Minister and eventually the climbing team is on its way to Dangna-Ri (6800m) _ a mountain for which climbing permission had never been given before. Brutland denies any connection. The team has to go through Rolwaling Valley which is sacred for Buddhists. Kleppa says, “”We don’t think that just because you are rich you can go into a wild area.
He should go and clear up mount Everest Base camp instead.” She has a point. The Nepalese Government has tightened up. It demands $US50,000 for and Everest climb, instead of the previous $US10,000 _ to get the same return for less damage. It demands also a $US2000 rubbish deposit, but some Sherpas say it is not well-policed because the rangers cannot get to higher peaks. We return to Kathmandu after 10 days on the path.
The smog stings the throat. Old, unserviced cars, trucks and three-wheeled taxi-motorbikes belch lead and black smoke into the air. Wood fires and industrial waste add to the health-defying air _ as they did in London in the 1950s and Tokyo in the 1960s. The smog was worse than five years ago. But the rest was unchanged. The tables and shops of brass, Ghurka knives, scarves and jumpers. The street vendors of tiger balm and flutes. “”Yes, please. Thank you very much.” “”How much you pay?” “”Change money?” It was like the ocean. You go away and then come back and realise that all that time the waves had been endlessly breaking. In Kathmandu even now someone is desperately selling tiger balm. “”One jar, 100 rupees.” “”No.” “”Two jars for 100 rupees. Three. Here, sahib, take four.” It is not commerce, but survival. The key is the 100 rupees ($2.50), not the amount sold or the profit margin. “”This is genuine Ghurka Army knife. Here is the date. You can see.”
At the splendid Sanker Hotel, a greying whitewash palace straight out of the Raj, under-employment is rife. “”Good morning, sir,” a man in old army uniform salutes, opening the door. Six porters, two exchange dealers, two receptionists, three shop assistants, two men of indeterminate function near a counter with complimentary newspapers and two more uniformed door-openers stand about. An exchange dealer laboriously fills in a form in triplicate with carbon paper which I thought ceased manufacture on the day Bill Gates turned 33.
The receptionist, too, fills in forms in hand-writing in great detail. Later I see a man with a Remington upright copy the forms. This was Sir Humphrey’s hospital without patients, except the bureaucrats were smiling. It could not be questioned. Outside Namche Bazar there was a check point for trekkers. There was one clerk sitting at a rough desk with three chairs opposite him. He has a stamp but no pen. He uses yours. He writes in every name, destination, passport number into a large ledger book. Each time the trekkers move along the musical chairs.
Everyone laughs and jokes because there is no point in worrying about the delay. Someone mentions Napoleon. “”Oh yes,” says the clerk, “”He is very famous for an army that marched on its belly. You see I am being an educated man.” The white teeth gleam in the dark room as he smiles. I ask, “”What do you do with the book?”. He shrugs. “”Oh, I am putting it away every night.” And he points to a cupboard. He is irrepressible. And anyone who imagines _ as reported a month ago _ that a few cheap Russian helicopters doing the Kathmandu-Lukla run will take away the Sherpa industry of exporting Everest, they are quite wrong _ or at least I hope so. They did not subdue Afghanistan and they will not subdue the Sherpas of the Himalayas.