12 inspiring stories about the lives of Sherpa mountaineers

A review of Sherpa by Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari

There have been many books about Sherpa mountaineers over the years. I wrote about some of my favourites in this post from a few years ago. Few have been written from the perspective of Sherpas themselves. Of the three in that post, one was famously ghosted by an American, one was co-written by an Australian, and the other was written by a Sherpa who has lived much of his life in America. Perhaps more significantly, they were by three generations of the Tenzing family, which is a bit like getting a perspective on life in Britain by watching three episodes of The Crown.

One book that comes close to capturing Sherpa stories from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, is the appropriately titled Sherpa: Stories of Life and Death from the Guardians of Everest by Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari, which I read recently.

The authors are not Sherpas (their names offer a clue) but Nepali journalists with an interest in trekking and mountaineering, who have hunted down interesting Sherpa characters and trekked out to their mountain villages to interview them.

Their travels took them far and wide, not only to the Khumbu (Everest) region of Nepal, but the  Rolwaling, Makalu and Kangchenjunga regions, to Darjeeling in India and even as far as the United States to interview Sherpa émigrés.

The stories they have unearthed are many and varied. Some are well known, such as that of Tenzing Norgay, the first man to climb Everest. Others cover names that will be familiar to those of you who follow the world of commercial mountaineering: Apa Sherpa, Kami Rita, Phurba Tashi and Ang Tshering. While their names may be familiar, their backgrounds have rarely been written about in much detail. This book helps to bring them to life.

Some of the more interesting stories are the ones covering remarkable but unsung heroes, such as Kushang Dorje and Pemba Dorje. If these names don’t mean anything to you yet then read on. The strand linking all of these Sherpas together, and the reason that all of them have become famous, is Everest. 

The first two chapters contain perhaps the least interesting stories of the whole book (for me, at least). The first chapter starts with a contemporary account of an experienced Sherpa guiding his elderly client up the South-East Ridge on summit day. There are queues of people for them to pass and a dead body hanging from a rope. True-to-life, indeed, for every climber who has summited Everest by one of the two standard routes. But also clichéd and macabre. These are not the things that make climbing Everest a memorable experience. 

The second chapter covers eye-witness accounts of the 2014 and 2015 Everest tragedies, one an avalanche triggered by a collapsing serac and the other an avalanche triggered by an earthquake. These events have been covered widely elsewhere (including by myself) and little new is offered here. 

Stick with it, though. Halfway through the first chapter we are offered a glimpse of the more uplifting tone provided by the rest of the book. We are introduced to Kancha (or Kanchha as it is written in the book, but see my post about double aitches). He was the last surviving member of the 1953 British expedition, and the authors were able to interview him before he too made his last journey to the great glacier in the sky.

At the age of 18, Kancha ran away from his home in Namche Bazaar to Darjeeling in India, where he knocked on the door of Tenzing Norgay’s house seeking a job. As luck would have it, Tenzing was able to put him to work as one of the 400 porters needed to transport gear from Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp… and higher still. 

Kancha excelled, and ended up being one of the three Sherpas who carried equipment for Tenzing and Hillary’s camp above the South Col on their historic first ascent. Kancha went on more expeditions, but only as a porter; this was long before climbers were clients and Sherpas were expected to accompany them to the summit. A few years later, Kancha had saved enough to quit portering and open a hotel in Namche which survives to this day. 

Tenzing Norgay himself is covered in a later chapter of the book. The story of how Tenzing moved to Darjeeling, befriended Angtharkay and was plucked from a line of hopefuls by Eric Shipton is the stuff of legend.

There is an interesting twist in the shape of some local superstitions that all point to his being destined for greatness. Shortly after his birth, the local lama declared him to be the reincarnation of a rich man. At around that time, his impoverished family rapidly became rich by producing 100s of yaks (which I believe remains the standard measure of wealth in Tibet to this day). As a young boy, he fell asleep while tending the yaks and was discovered with a snake – believed to be a manifestation of the god Shiva – rearing its head and standing watch over him (there is a similar story from my own childhood, only I was found with a dog cocking its leg over me). Tenzing’s second wife Ang Lhamu was believed to be a manifestation of the mountain goddess Miyolangsangma, whose life’s purpose was to guide him along his regal path.

Separate chapters cover the stories of some of the giants of modern-day trekking and mountaineering, and how they came to be successful. 

These include the giants among mountaineering operators as well as the giants of guiding. The former includes Ang Tshering Sherpa, who founded his company Asian Trekking in the 1960s after helping with the logistics for the legendary 1963 American Everest expedition. He was president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) for many years and is arguably the most influential figure in Himalayan mountaineering of the last 50 years.

The other operators covered are Mingma, Chang Dawa and Tashi Lhakpa, the three brothers from the Makalu region who founded the company Seven Summits Treks after Mingma realised that becoming the first Sherpa to climb all the 8,000ers would be a great marketing coup. He was right. Seven Summits Treks have become utterly dominant on the 8,000ers, and have made climbing all fourteen a possibility for commercial clients where it was previously only achievable by the boldest and most talented Himalayan climbers.

The greats of guiding include some of the obvious candidates. Apa, Phurba Tashi and Kami Rita have all been world-famous for holding the record for most ascents of Everest (at the time of writing Kami Rita now has a staggering 30 ascents under his belt). The younger generation is represented by Mingma David Sherpa, who became the youngest Sherpa to climb all the 8,000ers at the age of 32, and was a mentor and latterly business partner to the rather more famous Nirmal ‘Nims’ Purja.

My favourite stories are the quirkier ones about Sherpas who may not be famous for breaking records but are extraordinary, nonetheless. Lhakpa Sherpa wasn’t intended by his parents to become a climbing Sherpa. He is the son of Panuru Sherpa, who runs the Khumbu Climbing Center in Phortse and has climbed Everest 17 times. In common with many climbing Sherpas, Panuru sent his son to Kathmandu to acquire an education that would enable him to break out of mountaineering. But the mountains were in Lhakpa’s heart. Unusually, when he grew up, Lhakpa decided to turn away from the path that Panuru had set him on. He returned to Phortse and became a climbing Sherpa like his father.

One of the most remarkable stories concerns Kushang Dorje, a Sherpa from the Kangchenjunga region, who sneaked away from his family as a teenager in the hope of reaching Darjeeling to make his fortune. Along the way he was tricked and sold into slavery in Bhutan. After a year of back-breaking work in a mine, he escaped and worked his way back to Darjeeling where he found his way into mountaineering. He eventually became the first person – not just the first Sherpa – to climb Everest from three sides, making a rare ascent of the East (or Kangshung) Face, alongside the standard routes on the north and south sides.

Pradeep and Ankit’s visit to the Rolwaling region yields a meeting with a family of 11 siblings, eight of whom have climbed Everest. One of these is Pemba Dorje, who set a speed record by climbing Everest in 8 hours 10 minutes in 2004. More typically, the family has also been touched by tragedy in the mountains, when one of the brothers died in an avalanche on Pumori.

Tragedy touches many of the stories in the book, most notably those of the handful of women featured. There is the story of Lhakpa Futi, the climbing partner of Pasang Lhamu, the first Sherpa woman to climb Everest in 1993, who died in a storm during the descent. We learn about Furdiki Sherpa, whose husband Mingma died in the Khumbu Icefall while performing his job as an icefall doctor. Furdiki teamed up with Nima Doma, who lost her husband in the 2014 Everest avalanche. Together they raised funds to climb the mountain themselves in memory of their husbands. Another Doma’s life was ripped apart when her husband, who owned a successful trekking company, died on the North Ridge in 2013. She spent the next few years of her life trying, unsuccessfully, to have his remains brought down.

Pradeep and Ankit’s fascination with mountaineering shine through the pages of this book. They manage to achieve a delicate balance of handling their subjects sensitively while maintaining a journalist’s critical eye. They clearly have a deep respect for everyone they interviewed, yet they avoid hero worship and handle their subjects with impartiality. More importantly, they have provided inspiring stories that have never been told in writing before, and that makes the book worth reading.

There has been a flurry of books about Sherpas in recent years. It’s long overdue and Sherpa: Stories of Life and Death from the Guardians of Everest deserves its place among them.

To find out more about the evolution of Sherpas from the porters of early expeditions to the superstar climbers of the present day, you could also try my own book Sherpa Hospitality as a Cure for Frostbite, which is composed of a collection of the best posts from this blog.