THE CONQUEST OF USELESSNESS (Satis Shroff)

The Conquest of Uselessness in the death-zone at minus 40 degrees, namely climbing peaks and scaling vertical rocky, icy walls, may seem a forelorn task for the layman or the couch-potato, but for the adventurer it takes a new meaning towards knowing oneself and the world.

If you’re victorious the world applauds, but the also-rans don’t count, like in athletics. Words like fight, victory, comradeship and leadership become meaningless in the Alpine or Himalayan heights because you’re battling against the elements: the howling wind, the scary avalanche, the thin air and the noise of the glacier crunching nearby. They haunt you at night and during the day. Your hematocrit value sinks, breathing becomes hard, and you trudge on. Sometimes there’s a whiteout. You see nothing but a mantle of snow and a furious blizzard everywhere. You hear your heartbeat and feel the angst within you. You want to live on, survive to tell the story of your ascent of Everest, and your descent. You want to witness the jubilation of your friendly, religious Nepalese porters at the base-camp with their litany of Tibetan mantras and colourful prayer flags, internet café, DVD movies. Hot coffee, dinner party.

Whereas the Sherpas want to appease the Gods of the Himalayas with ritual sacrifices, the Eurocentric sahibs aren’t interested in appeasing the fears of the Sherpas. Alas, Everest has become a place for egoists, fanatics and dreamers. Up there Freud’s ‘Ich’ has priority and the higher they climb the crazier and ‘grosswahnsinnig’ they become.

To climb a mountain ‘by fair means’ is a slogan that dated back to the 19th century, and was postulated by a climber named Albert Frederick Mummery who died in 1895 while climbing the Nanga Parbat (Naked Mountain). The South Tyroler Reinhold Messner found this slogan appealing and has used it since then. According to the Tyrole Declaration for Best Practice in mountain-sport ‘Good style in the mountain-world means to relinquish the use of fix-ropes, performance increasing drugs and oxygen-bottles. Sadly enough, businessmen, executives and amateurs love to climb with the help of travel agencies at a sum of 80,000 dollars to get helped to climb Everest. They don’t care how they get up to the summit. They’re heroes at home when they’ve made it.

And the Sherpa? He’ll be glad to return home with a bit of money, if he doesn’t die in an avalanche.  
  
Alone in 1996 over 30 climbers made it to the top of Everest. Climbing with expeditions sponsored by firms has led to tourism for the masses. Adventure in the Himalayas is sold out.

- Why Everest?
-  Because it’s there?
- No, it’s the highest. It brings you prestige. At the same time, your life and the life of the Sherpa mountain-guide is endangered. One does is for esteem in the western world, and the other to eke out a living.

When a western climber dies because he doesn’t listen to his Nepalese mountain-guide, he takes the guide with him in the recesses of a crevice, only to turn up a years later like George Mallory (1924) in the moraine. Without the help of the Sherpas, Tamang-porters and experienced Nepalese mountain-guides who set the roles and ladders for the climbing tourists, most of these foreign enthusiasts wouldn’t have a chance in the Himalayan heights.

It might be noted that there are many clans among the Sherpa people. Sherpas are of Tibetan stock and live mostly in the Solokhumbu Canton of Eastern Nepal. In Helembu they live a sequestered life. As far as the language, religion and culture are concerned the Sherpas show a lot of similarities with the Tibetans but at the same time they celebrate also Hindu festivals and speak Nepali. It was the King Prithvinarayan Shah from Gorkha who in a bid to unite Nepal after his many conquests introduced Nepali as the lingua franca of Nepal. This brought a lot of hill tribes, Bahuns and Chettris who lived in the blue middle mountains, and the Tharus and Maithili-speakers of the Madesh (Terai flatland in Southern Nepal) together.

Tenzing Norgay was the first Sherpa to scale Everest with a bee-farmer from New Zealand, Edmund Hillary in 1953. Tenzing was a Nepalese who’d gone to Darjeeling to join an expedition to Everest or Kanchenjunga, for in those days the Brits operated from the Queen of the Hillstations. Kathmandu was established as a based for expeditions to the Nepal Himalayas later. After Tenzing, a great number of Sherpas have scaled the peaks of the Nepal Himalayas. The Sherpas live on rice, barley, potatoes and yak-milk and meat, and are known for their hospitality, even though they are don’t have much. The young people migrate to Kathmandu or Darjeeling in search of work. Life is hard in the hills. Times have changed in Nepal and so have the governments with the massacre of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya by their own son. A decade-long war was waged by the Maoists of Nepal and  King Gyanendra’s reign didn’t last long. Now the Maoists hold the reins under the guise of democracy. Nepal, quo vadis?

Money dictates the relationship between the sahibs and the porters. It is also a lesson in intercultural incompetence, because the porters are used by the dollar-toting visitors as high-altitude workers and are expected to obey, much like the Gurkhas, and show discipline and loyalty, on a hire-and-fire basis, which is a bit too much in the UK, Italy and Switzerland. Human rights in the rarefied atmosphere? Does a Sherpa have a life-insurance, social-insurance, medical-insurance? The sahibs from the Continent do and they dictate what the Nepalese have to do.

Eurocentrics might or might not assist other climbers along the route but the egoism-prize goes to the Chinese who left one of their colleagues to die. But this isn’t the only case. The Brit climber David Sharp, who was dying on Everest, was left unassisted and 40 adventurers walked past the Brit in 2006.

- What went in their minds?
- There’s no time for such rescue activities.
- This climb was expensive. I’ve got to make it to the top.
- Somebody else will do the job. Not me.
- I don’t want to be a loser.
- Ach, just walk over the corpse and forget about your sentiments. This is the death-zone. Those are just lucky, unfortunate losers.

And so you march on, oblivious of the dying Brit or Sherpa. Time is money. And victory over the mountain means fame. You’re on your way to becoming an Everest-hero, even though 250 expeditions assault the Sagarmatha every year with corpses of dead climbers, and rubbish of the western civilization, along the route.

Welcome to Everest. We’ll get you to the top, no matter how.