Dr. Peter Reagan:
I could barely make out several people squatting or leaning on blankets in the dark smoky room. Everyone seemed to be having a really nice time. Outside in broad daylight a 2 year old child teetered along on top of a 7 ft high garden wall of dry rock construction.. Didn’t look like anyone was worried. A young woman washing clothes at the well looked up vaguely annoyed as some of us snapped photos of her. In the next yard a woman was making fuel patties out of yak dung. She glanced up and grinned; held up her muddy hands for us to appreciate what she was doing. In the next yard 2 six year olds were trying on back packs. We ourselves weren’t carrying much but the porters, all of whom lived within a few days walk, had all of our individual camping gear on their backs, as well as all the group supplies, tents, stoves, first aid gear, etc. In a few more minutes we stopped for lunch in the center of the hamlet. This was Shomare, a village at almost 14,000 ft just below Dingboche in the Imja Khola canyon. The very tippy top of Everest was barely peeking over the ramparts of Nuptse, now so close on the eastern horizon.
I could barely make out several people squatting or leaning on blankets in the dark smoky room. Everyone seemed to be having a really nice time. Outside in broad daylight a 2 year old child teetered along on top of a 7 ft high garden wall of dry rock construction.. Didn’t look like anyone was worried. A young woman washing clothes at the well looked up vaguely annoyed as some of us snapped photos of her. In the next yard a woman was making fuel patties out of yak dung. She glanced up and grinned; held up her muddy hands for us to appreciate what she was doing. In the next yard 2 six year olds were trying on back packs. We ourselves weren’t carrying much but the porters, all of whom lived within a few days walk, had all of our individual camping gear on their backs, as well as all the group supplies, tents, stoves, first aid gear, etc. In a few more minutes we stopped for lunch in the center of the hamlet. This was Shomare, a village at almost 14,000 ft just below Dingboche in the Imja Khola canyon. The very tippy top of Everest was barely peeking over the ramparts of Nuptse, now so close on the eastern horizon.
Shomare in 2010 was not really a major destination on the route to
Everest Base Camp, and Kala Pattar, Nestled in the canyon between the
larger villages of Pangboche and Dingboche, it lacked the blatant hotel and
shop construction so pervasive in the those larger and more well known spots. A
small cluster of tiny houses in the midst of a mountain meadow with barely
enough growing season to support some yaks and a few vegetable gardens.
A year before, I had come in to work one morning and on my desk
was a note from David Christopher inviting me to co lead a trek to Everest Base
Camp / Kala Pattar. As a lifelong hiker, climber and paraglider pilot as
well as an enthusiastic consumer of mountaineering literature I was deeply
steeped in the climbing history of the Nepal Himalaya and jumped at the chance
to see these astonishing mountains in person. Now, after three treks there I do
indeed reserve a unique reverence for this uniquely awesome geography, but I
guess I was surprised at the depth of relationship we formed with the Sherpa
and Tamang who lived there and shared their world with us.
I have no expertise or prior acquaintance with these people, but
am filled with appreciation for what they are sharing with us and doing for us,
the interminable parade of international visitors come to see their big
mountains. We were a group of 16 trekkers, and we were traveling with quite a
few staff. There were six Sherpa guides, two cook staff, about twenty
porters and a yak herder. This group was arranged through a Sherpa owned
trekking company in Kathmandu and supervised by a sirdar in his late 40s with
many years of trekking and mountaineering experience. Phurba, our sirdar, had
finished second grade and then began to work in the fields and carry loads for
climbers. He can not read or write, and had never driven a car but he has
fluency in six very disparate languages, including Sherpa and Nepali, English,
German and some Korean.
Linguistic competence was just one small example among many
talents. Managing a group of forty very diverse people traveling together
is no small achievement in itself. Perhaps one of his more subtle facilities
lay in managing our own expectations to make safe decisions. In our
group, within a couple of days, it had become apparent to the Sherpa that we
were not really qualified to complete the itinerary that we proposed. Phurba
waited for a brief but somewhat surprising snowstorm to let us know that our
plans were unrealistic and we would not be completing the treks across two high
passes on our circuitous original plan. Communicating this well required
him to be able to put himself in our shoes. In retrospect I find it quite
astonishing that he can do this, considering our disparate backgrounds and
experience.
On a trip of this size into rather hostile wilderness there were medical
decisions to be made. As the team doctor I needed to be both respectful
of the unique challenges of high altitude, and also culturally appropriate
depending on whether the patient was a customer or an employee. I relied
heavily on Phurba for all of the clinical decisions. I could recognize the
porter’s wounds and ailments but he knew the treatments they were accustomed to
and trusted. With the Americans, I could take a history and do the physical,
but Phurba had a much better feel for the typical course of altitude related
maladies and his advice on this was lifesaving. Ultimately about half the group
were unable to ascend all the way to Kala Pattar and there were significant
logistics involved in leading various small groups back down as they became
ill, splitting the functions of carrying and cooking as well as Sherpa
leadership.
Phurba accomplished all of this with a level of calm, humility and
engaged compassion that each of us customers can only hope perhaps to partially
emulate in our own lives. The entire society of the villages in the high
Himalaya seemed so steeped in a Buddhist appreciation for self knowledge and
loving kindness that enabled him to get to the heart of issues quickly and
gently, which made the changes and occasional disappointments much more
tolerable, and even quite educational.
All of the Sherpa, and porters had manual and hunting skills well
beyond what any of us from the west could do. They had deep knowledge of local
fauna, and without binoculars they could point out thars , lammergeiers, musk
deer, weasels, pikas and impeyan pheasants well before any of the rest of us
could spot them. It seemed everyone was an accomplished stone mason. One
evening I placed a single rock to help get between levels of two farm paddies…
a porter noticed what I was doing and when I returned an hour later he had
built an elegant and stable 3 step staircase, right angles everywhere with
perfect placements of perhaps 20 irregular rocks. All also had the skills
necessary to run a farm down to small details, repair equipment and to herd
yaks, donkeys, and zokios (cow/yak hybrids) which are the basic form of high
altitude transportation .
I live in Portland Oregon and feel quite secure navigating my own
culture to provide for myself and family. However, if I am here for the long
predicted Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake I know for certain that the
Himalayan natives that have immigrated here will have much better survival
skills than I do. Maybe one of the more important benefits of travel can be the
kind of humility you feel when you realize this.
Since our trip we have maintained a long term friendship with Phurba and his
family, very much with the help of his tech savvy children, and are truly
indebted to them for showing us an inspiring view of their approach to
life. I treasure this as much as I value the chance to learn and love the
amazing Himalayan landscape.
