SYSK Selects: Sherpas: Warm, Friendly Living

the area. And the more we dug into Sherpas, the more we realize just what um, warm, hospitable, amazing people they are. And uh, it's really easy to overlook the sherpa because you will often hear about the the wealthy climber of Everest, uh, and not much about the sherpa that really got them there. So this was our bid to shine little light on the Sherpa. So here we go with Sherpa's Warm Friendly Living. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and

welcome to the Sherpa. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Did I just say Sherpa? No, he said welcome to the podcast. What would you say, Welcome to the sharp because the Sherpa is a nation of people and also a last name and also an occupation. Yeah, that's pretty good. Well, that's the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant didn't ignore Gay Bryant. Yeah, yeah, Chuck, we're talking about sherp today. Yeah. Is it Sharpa or sharp I have no idea because I see both in

this article. I do as well. All right, let's find out, shall we? If everyone will just hold on a second, are you actually looking this up? Chuck? Most people do this before there hit podcast. Have you have you ever seen Well, I'm sure this won't make it in. You never know, it'll never make it in. Have you ever seen in Um Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? The first one? That was not the first one? Yes, it was that Raiders the Lost Ark was first, That's

what I meant. I'm sorry, Temple of Doom was too. What was I thinking? I don't know. You've seen Raters of the Lost Ark? Yeah, okay, scores of times. So you know when he find he goes to meet Marian for the first time after like ten years after jilting her. Yes, the drinking scene. Yes, the guy, the huge guy that Marian is drinking with or I guess in a drinking contest with. It's like they kept hearing me say chuck over and over again. Right, Um, that my friend was Shirpa,

was it? I'm pretty sure he looked Mongolian to me. No, they were definitely in like Nepal. Okay, yeah, it's it, even said Nepaul. Remember he flies in the plane a poop and it's like redline takes him to Nepal. Yeah, all right, so let's call him a sharpa. So shir Buzz is plural of Serpa. That's what I thought. I thought so too. Um. The Sherpa people are actually pretty fascinating.

They're pretty isolated, um. And they haven't been where they are, which is the base of Mount Everest in the um Solu Kumboo area region of Nepal, for more than actually about five years, and when they arrived in the Solo Cumboo region, they found it uninhabited. And the reason why is because the Sherpas are pretty much the only people on the planet besides maybe Ethiopian Highlanders or Peruvians in the Andes who could conceivably live in this area because

again it's at the foot of Mount Everest. Yes, and we recorded a podcast on Tibetans and altitude sickness, so if you want to know all about that, refer to that podcast. But Josh, you're right. They migrated from Tibet from the province of Calm to the northeast corner of Nepal around the sixteenth century because of warfare. Yeah, and as I understand, they're very peaceful people. Oh very so they would have been fleeing warfare, I would say, so, yeah,

not running toward it right headlong. So, um, they migrated there. There was a lot more like forest and wood and fuel for fuel at the time, which is good. And they could grow wheat and buckwheat at the time, and that's about all I could grow. But that was enough. Right later on, potatoes really changed the way they do farming because they grow a lot of potatoes now. Yeah, the I think the potato was introduced in the mid

nineteenth century and that kind of changed everything. Eighty I'm sorry, um, but if you think about it this, these people, well, when they first arrived in the area, they moved to um Uh the Kumbo Valley, which is higher up actually than Um the Solu area, and it's about um between eleven thousand and thirteen thousand feet and they're like, this is a little too high. Everybody's a little sick. So we're gonna move a little further down to the Soleu region.

Between six it's still extremely high. Um, it's still extremely rocky. And they whip this part of the Himalayas into shape. They created um terraced farm fields. Guatemala. Baby, remember that. Yeah, down a slope you can create you can farm on the side of a mountain. People do, but um, think about this, I mean, like, how did they figure that out? I'm very curious. Well, I mean it's you know, it's

not rocket science. You need flat land. And if you have a steep side of a mountain and you cut into that, you can create a series of steps, essentially, which is flat land. Cherris in their laughing, Yeah, I would have been in trouble. Cherrys, like, I'd be in the Guadamala three times. I know all about step irrigation, and then I had to do all this. I would have been like, man, I wish you were flat around here. I guess I'll just sit here until I die. Um,

so you'd oh, I'd be terrible at it. One of the reasons why I be terrible at it is because I will get in my car to drive fiet from say, store to store. Do you do that? Take over there at the Edgewood, like you'll got a target and then you'll drive to Kroger. I haven't been there in a while, but I have. I have. Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, like, yeah, I'll walk. I walk more now than I ever had before. My entire defending like the weather or what's going on,

definitely depends on whether it depends on my schedule. Very often I get that if I'm in a hurry, I might do that, right. I would make a terrible strip of though, because they don't have wheeled anything. They're a terrible strippers. I would make both terrible. Okay, yeah, well I know Aaron Cooper is going to make this exactly. Um, yes, as I just said, I think I think it bears reiterating, Um, Mr joke guy, there are no wheeled anything's there. There's

no cars, there's no wheelbarrows. Yeah, they don't even use wheelbarrows, which now we've reached another reason I would be a terrible shirt but they have to carry everything. I can barely carry a thing a dog food out of the grocery store to my car. And that's like with a car involved, which has wheels, which they don't have in the Solukumboo region. That's right. They carry everything, Josh, and they use uh we actually saw this in Guatemala to

the plumb line. Trumpline, trump line. Yeah, it's home line is a little different. What they'll do is they'll, let's say, get a big load of firewood and they'll they'll they'll wrap it up in in in a spank it on

the bottom, spanking on the bottom. They'll wrap it up and so they can wear it on their back and a big bundle and then attached to the top of of you know, let's say they lay it in like a hammock and fold that over a hammock like thing, and then that is attached to a band that you know, it's like a headband, and so it goes around their head and it takes a lot of the weight off their back. And we saw these at them, all the dudes walking up the road, and I thought, man, look

at that. That's like ancient engineering still in practice and you're like, man, I want to I gotta do more of that, And you got back here and you're like, we're cheeseburger and my Jan Sport backpack. Anybody who's ever seen the front cover of um led Zeppelin four is familiar with this concept as well. Was he wearing one of those? He should have been if he wasn't, because that's a big old bundle of sticks that guys carrying. There was a bustle in his head. Draw honeyway. So

um Sherpas can whip a mountain into farmland. They can live on buck wheat and then several hundred years without the potato, and then the potato and yak yack milk and yack meat. Right. Yea. They walk everywhere, but they carry things everywhere. Um with the as they and they they are basically a mountain, their mountain folk. They have. They speak a Tibetan dialect that's virtually their own. They don't have a written language, no written language. Until the

nineteen sixties, there is no formalized education. Um. They just lived. They carved a very meager existence out for themselves, and thanks to a dude named Sir Edmund Hillary, they now have the foundation that he set up. And we'll get to Edmund Hillary in a second, but everyone, come on, you know who he is. He's the first man to us and everest with Tin signor gay Serpa to summit to summit. What I say, I send? Yeah, I mean, what's this? You gotta get to the top, right or else? What?

He just blew sixty five grand that's about how much it cost. So through his foundation in later years, he he became to love the uh peaceful Buddhist of of the Sherpa people there, and so he's like, you know, and a set of foundation, we're gonna do things like bring some schools, bring some hospitals, give these kids access to healthcare, things like that. So he did that and that helped a lot, although nowadays, you know, the schools aren't in great shape evidently. Uh it's kind of hard

to get there. So um, they're they're doing what they can. Right. You can take the folk out of the mountain, but you can't take the mountain out of the folk, you

know what I mean? That's right. Uh. They are very friendly, very peaceful, um, very compact, very strong, great attitudes apparently, and that's not just Chuck saying that, Um, chuck, you're basing that on the guy who basically took these very isolated, happy, UM self sustaining, self sufficient UM people, mountain people UM and introduced them to the world, or no, introduced them to the people who would introduce them to the world,

right right, What is the Englishman who's credited with saying, Hey, if you want to get up Everest, do you need yourself? As that was Alexander Kellis not tens ignore gay, not Sir Edmund Hillary right, well, tends of noor gave was a SRP. He's far too modest. I'm under the impression to have been like, you want to get up Everest, you get yourself a Serpa Sherpas store. They're not big self promoters. The English have been the biggest promoters of

um sherpas and UM. Alexander kellis what was his name? He tried to make it up Everest and failed. But um, there was a there was a point in time where well, if you look at a mountain, it's not like a cone. You know, those um styrofoam cones that you can get at like the craft store that have like actual volume. It's a it's a cone. The mountain is not like that. It has all sorts of craggy peaks and different faces.

And if you go up one side and make it up easy, just that doesn't mean that you can go up any other side and make it up easy. Right. So the place where the um the Sherpa live is actually a pretty good way to get up Everest, but it was closed off. Nepaul as a country was closed off to the rest of the world until I think

nineteen forty nine. Yeah, Everest was confirmed as a high speak in eighteen sixty five, but it wasn't like all of a sudden the floodgates were open and every brit in the world said, I must conquer that mountain that they said that, but they were like, but how to get to it? And they happened right, But in between they're like, well, let's just colonize that place and then

figure out how to get up exactly true. And when India be in uh colonizing, I'm sorry when England began colonizing India, Darjeeling, across the eastern border of Nepal was a big popular tour spot for British military political officials.

That's where the big wigs that's where they met, uh, the Sherpa, And that's sort of where the mountaineering profession for the Sherpa kicked off, because all of a sudden they were Englishmen saying, I can now get in here to ascend in summit this mountain, but I need some help because I'm not carrying all that junk. Yeah, and it's not like Sherpas are the only ethnic group around Mount Everest. But as people soon found, like you said, they were sturdy, they are a compact, they can carry

tons of weight, and they have a cheerful attitude. So Alexander Kellis introduced the the climbing community, the Western climbing community, to the Sherpa, and in short order, Um Sherpas became extremely famous after like you said, Sir Edmund Hillary uh summited um Mount Everest. Yeah, and he was one of four people on that expedition. I never knew that. I just thought it was Sir Edmund Hillary got in his car in England and drove to Nepal and said, hey,

ten Zig, take me to the top. But it was a big group of people and they were the only two that made it right. They were the last ones, and they just kept on going. But yes, it was ten signor gay Sherpa. That's his last name. Yeah, because as you said at the beginning of this, it's it's a it's a group of people, it's a profession, and it's a last name. That's right. Um, So at that from that moment on, everybody knew what Sherpas were, right.

Oh yeah, they were no longer confused with al pacas. No. By in popular culture, people were like, oh, there are a group of people. Yeah, literally the people from the East, that's right. And they, like you said, don't they're not

grand standards. They don't get a lot of attention. And I made a joke, Um, I believe it was either dead bodies on everest or the Tibetan altitude sickness about Sherpas being unsung at the time, about how you always hear about, you know, the Indian or the brit standing on top of the mountain and you don't see the

Sherpa behind him carrying all their junk. And that's really true because when uh, well you know what I mean, Uh, when Hillary ascended and summited, he got a knighthood and Norgay got an honorary medal and you think, well, of course, I mean, they're going to give the British guy the

knighthood and they're going to give the foreigner a medal. Untrue, because sirmon Hillary is from New Zealand's right, he wasn't British, so technically he wasn't a a citizen of Great Britain, and neither was ten signor gay and they still didn't get the same thing. Yeah, it was. It was called the British Everest Expedition was the four People. So that's why I think a lot of people probably thought Hillary

was a brit but he was not. But again, um our Western culture is a little different from Sherpa culture. They like you said, they're not grand standards, they're not publicity hounds. They are um they do. The ones who are involved in climbing and trekking do make a pretty substantial amount of money, especially in comparison to what the

average person makes in Nepal. They make about two grand for a trip, right, and that the gross domestic product per capita of Nepal in two dozen sevens like three dollars. That really puts into perspective. They're rich by other standards,

I guess extremely rich, very wealthy. Um. But they they the I guess in addition to making money, they they help other people ascend Everest to attain their personal glory, right too, for the other people to attain their personal story um, which is kind of there's a lot of uh dichotomy between how the SRPA view Mount Everest and

how they interact with it. That the Western influence kind of puts them in this weird position because they are they follow a form of Tibetan buddhism um which says that you should perform selfless acts and help others, right, Yeah, And and being at the top of Everest to them means you're closer to enlightenment. Right. If the people are going to climb up anyway, you might as well go with them for too grand sure, but you might as well go with them to make sure that they don't

kill themselves. Right, very selfless people, it is. But at the same time they're helping the West kind of exploit Everest. That some people worry that the Everest experience is being cheapened since since Hillary Um summited Everest, I think like more than twenty other people have, right kind of loses its um closeness to the Buddhas when you know all these other footprints are everywhere and there's a couple hundred

dead bodies on the on the mountain. Yeah, I think uh Nor Gay kind of summed up there how they feel about Everest when he called it. When they asked him how he felt about being up there, and he he likened it to a mother hint and said what else? He said that this was quote warm and friendly living. How about that? Yeah? And then Hillary shoved him back down. He's like, quiet to get out of my picture frame. Noah, Gay,

here's your metal. Uh So, like you said, the um the region now, Josh, because of the massive amounts of tourism, and not massive like Grand Canyon massive obviously, but still for Mount Everests it's a lot of people going there trying to climb it. Um. We did talk about pollution there now, and so the very thing that brings the Tibetan Buddhist Serpa's enlightenment is also kind of denigrated the area somewhat. Yeah. Well, it's about twenty people passed through

that area per year. And now you can go play pool, you have internet access, you have the trappings of modern living, do you also have the drawbacks of modern living deforestation, yeah, pollution, yeah, exploitation, that kind of stuff, right, that's right. And this is what we should point out in uh Sagara Matha National Park where about thirty spas live and sagar Matha is the word for Everest, right. The the SRPA themselves call um Everest Chomo Lungma, Chomo Lungma Chumbawamba. It's close, no,

but that's not it. Okay, Chomo Lugma, which means roughly goddess mother of the world or mother hen Uh. You want to talk about a couple of famous serpis. Yeah, we can talk about Edmund Hillary all day long, but you never hear about Appa Sharpa. Yes, and all he's done is ascend in summit ever seventeen times more than anybody else in the world. Not bad. What about Babu uh cheery chehery Sharpa, Yeah, camped on the summit of

Mount Everest fore hours without oxygen. Usually what happens when you climb Everest as you get your picture made and you say, wow, this is really unbelievable. This is amazing. All right, let's go back down right, and you have five million canisters of oxygen is disposing. I'm really high. Who else there's a lock Lockpa Galu Sherpa, who holds the world record for the fastest amount everest um a cent ten hours fifty six minutes in forty seconds. That's a lot that man. Wow, you have Ming keep a

sharpa who Oh, what's the big deal with Ming? Ming just climbed everest at the age of fifteen years old, not on his xbox in real life. Yes. And then there's Pessang Lambu Sherpa, who was chuck the first woman which apparently, Um, when women started climbing everest or serving as sherpas to climbing expeditions, um in the seventies, there was uh, this is probably the biggest problem internally for the Sherpa's that um, you know, Western tourism was was

having on their culture. You know, a woman's place traditionally is at the farm in Sherpa culture, on the side of the mountain. And I guess there was some static for a while, and then finally, you know, more and more women started doing it and we're doing it successfully, and um that was that. Yeah. And and evidently, um, when the husband, if the husband is the the sarpa worker,

um goes on one of these trips. Then the female becomes ahead of the household at home if she's not a sharper herself, and we'll take care of things just like the husband would. It's nice, Yeah, Yet what else is here? I love these people. I think we would be you have a fun place in your heart. Means that that they remind me the people of Guatemala, you know,

kind of short and friendly and warm, friendly living stocky. Yeah, it makes me kind of wonder there's so many similarities Chuck that huh huh uh yeah, because think about it. Everybody calls the people of Sharpa, right, there are people from the east, but that's in reference to where you are in Solu Kumba Kumbo. Right. What were they called before they moved west? The people Mayan? Maybe? Uh? Finally, Josh for my part of this podcast. If you think someone is all the rail, do you think the sharp

I have a bad with not getting any recognition. There's also something called a porter. Yeah, and a lot of sharps grow up serving as porters. As porters, that's basically the job below the sherpa, who does even more of the heavy lifting and gets even less money and less oxygen less clothing, yeah, and other outerwear. Yeah. And there's an actual international porters group, right, yeah, protection group that

are advocates for their safety and fair wages. Because obviously, if you've got a very poor person doing a lot of hard work, they're probably being taken advantage of in some way. So, Chuck, we would be remissed to do a podcast on the Shirpa and everest in Hillary Um and not mention the Yetti. I don't know much about the Eddie. I didn't look at that. So the Himalayas are the home of the yeti, the abominable Snowman. It's another way to put it, which is basically like the cold,

extreme cold, high altitude version of Bigfoot. Is that right? Yeah? Okay, I just always thought that's what we thought of it. I didn't look into it. No, it is pretty much okay, Um, It's a biped, very furry, heavy, large biped that's mysterious and and lives out and out by itself. It's big Foot, but in the him Alayas, it's like in the Empire, like cometh, and it's more like the Abominable Snowman in the Rudolph Christmas Specials. It looked kind of like the

thing in Empire, kind of who looks like wow? Um. Anyway, Hillary himself was actually a believer in the Yeti. He went back after summiting Everest. He went back again in nineteen sixty to look for the Yettie because he'd seen YETI footprints what he took to be YETI footprints. Oh really, huh interesting? He found nothing though he didn't and a lot of people think that these were just some other animals footprints that melted in the snow and expanded as

the snow melted. Who knows YETI. Again, you have taught me something, my friend. Thank you for that, because I couldn't figre out how to wrap this one up. I feel like we should apologize for the light nature of this, but we just recorded right before this on the nuclear disaster in Japan, so I think we were rife for a little. Plus. Also, we should point out, in true Sherpa style, Chuck, they want it this way? Well, think about this. They there there there are all sorts of

trappings of Western influence and degradation of culture. Um, there is a dwindling of population. I think at its peak. This area was home to thousand people. Now it's down to thirty fire like you said in them in the park right. Uh the the There was a National Geographic survey of Sherpas saying are you concerned about Western influences on your culture? And they were like, not overly. Can you hand me the tepot remote you're sitting on it if you have any mountain do or bolt. So that's it,

a Serpas. If you want to read more, Um, there's actually some more in there, especially um, more on the Buddhist religion. I believe we didn't cover that fully. Um. Yeah, there's more goodness in there for sure. Yes, you can type in serpa's or sharpa if you want to be safe in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com, written by Kristen Kagner of stuff Mom never told you. That's right, that's true. Excellent podcast. Yes, it is a great podcast. And they did a great job

at south By Southwest they did. Um And since I said handy search bar and south By Southwest, that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. This is a little more Disney dirt, and most of the Disney dirt we got wasn't very good. We got a bunch of um. Yeah, there's really nothing going on there. There's underground tunnels, but that's no big deal, and it's really not like you guys think. We finally got a pretty

good one. This is from m and m Um seems like she would have been one of the employees that I might have been hanging around with that know about the dirt. Some people apparently don't even know about this stuff. I hope we don't get in trouble for this hang out. Hey, guys, I just finished listening to the Tickling podcast, excited that you asked for Disney dirt. As a cast member at the Happiest place on Earth for almost four years, I

gleaned some interesting tidbits of information for starters. In a work room behind Pirates of the Caribbean, there exists an infamous Milar table, which has a long standing reputation for being a favorite place for cast members to be amorous with one another after hours. I can't imagine how clean such a table might be, but many cast members have been known to participate in the tradition simply for the sake of being part of the legend. It's for like

the Mile High Club. I guess on my attraction, the Jungle Cruise. Uh it said that one can't be a real skipper until they have urinated into the river. No, so, she says, I suspect it is much about you know, you can you can create the uh what what is it the most? What happens to play? Happiest place on Earth? But if you staff it with board and nihilistic twenty year old, it's going to end up like this. Yeah, someone's going to be in the river. Most of the time.

This is done before after park operating hours, when a skipper can take out a boat alone and relieve him or herself, often into the hippo pool. So you can imagine it's harder for girls to participate in this rite of passage either. Sheer logistics, but I do know some women who have managed to become real skips. I think it'd be more physics than logistics, she says. The mechanics boggles my mind. Now for the gnarly stuff under Space Mountain,

there are stored sixty tho body bags. Supposedly they're there in case of a natural disaster or some other emergency where people may be trapped inside the park for an extended period of time. I don't believe that. I don't believe it either. The food freezers in the storeroom down the hall are also over six ft tall for storage, if you know what I mean. It's quite morbid and a popular site for telling ghost stories. I've got plenty more if you want some off the record ghost stories.

This was on the record geez or personal anecdotes from my time as a jungle Crui skipper. I'd be happy to share. Keep up the great work from m Well. I would love to hear the off the record once. What is her name? Am? I'd like to take her to lunch? Yeah? Well, please at least send us an email. Okay, I don't think we'd be allowed to go out to lunch with that girl. Our significant others are good. Um, Chuck, Josh, you got anything else? I'm done? All right? Um? What

should we call for here? How about if you've a sended everest it's boring? Okay? Um? If you are interested in your state seceding from it's current geographical boundaries, we want to hear why that's right? Uh? Send it in an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page. M