From the start of reading this book I have been wondering about the Sherpa culture, their customs and values. Page 112 bottom paragraph mentions that one of the Sherpa, Ngawang, was feeling ill but didn’t seek medical help because of the reluctance to acknowledge any illnesses.
According to peakfreaks.com Sherpa’s originally migrated from Tibet to the valleys of Khumbu in Nepal 600 years ago. The most common religious practice of Tibetan Buddhism is Nyingmapa, the oldest tradition of Buddhism. Daily life of a villager would consist of farming, herding and trading, and before the 1950s when all the tourists started to flock the great mountain, trading with Tibet, mainly dealing in salt and wool. What the Sherpa can eat is limited to what can be grown in high altitude cold weather; Potato, buckwheat, and barley.
I’m finding it interesting that people can be so accustomed to cold thin air, when to me it lends the impression or never being warm, or you are never quite as warm as you like so you are always trying to huddle around a fire or wearing heavy clothing. There is a lot of fairly detailed back stories that are told in between the story so it gets a little confusing on what’s happening, but I am looking forward to when he gets top the top of Everest.
By Walden Reed
Esprit
Couldn't agree more, Walden. I also wanted to add about the sequence with Ngawang that later he was stumbling around and frothing at the mouth, and showing signs of high altitude pulmonary edema, or HAPE, in which the high altitude somehow makes the lungs fill with liquid. This just got me curious as to why this would come on if he is an experienced sherpa.
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