April 5, 2011 • 28 mins
Pop quiz: What word denotes a nation of people, a last name and an occupation? If you guessed 'Sherpa,' then congratulations: You're correct. But what exactly is a Sherpa? Tune in and learn more as Chuck and Josh explore the culture of the Sherpa people.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you 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. Didn't I
just say Sherpa? No, he said welcome to the podcast.
(00:21):
Why would you say welcome to the Sherpa 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 to ignore Gay Bryant. Yeah, yeah, Chuck,
(00:42):
we're talking about sherp today. Yeah. Is it Sharpa or sharps?
Have no idea because I see both in this article.
I do as well. All right, let's find out, shall we?
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
(01:04):
sure this won't make it in. You never know, they'll
never make it in. Have you ever seen 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 was too. What was they 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
(01:26):
to meet Marian for the first time after like ten
years after Jiltinger. 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 was it? I'm pretty sure he
(01:50):
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 boop, and it's like takes him to Nepal. Yeah,
all right, so let's call him a Scherpa. So scher
Buzz is plural of Serpa. That's what I thought. I thought,
so too. Um. The Srpa people are actually pretty fascinating.
(02:14):
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
(02:37):
is because the Serpas 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
(02:57):
that podcast. But Josh, you're right. They might grated from
Tibet from the province of Calm to the northeast corner
of Nepal around the sixteenth century because of warfare. Yeah,
and I as I understand, they're very peaceful people, oh
very so they would have been fleeing warfare, I would say, so,
(03:17):
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 was good. And
they could grow wheat and buckwheat at the time, and
that's about all they could grow, but that was enough.
Right later on, potatoes really changed the way they do
(03:38):
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 Cumboo Valley, which is higher up actually
(04:01):
then um the Solu area, and it's about um, between
eleven thousand and thirteen feet and they're like, this is
a little too high. Everybody is a little sick. So
they're gonna move a little further down to the Solu
region between it's still extremely high. Um, it's still extremely rocky,
and they whip this part of the Himalayas into shape.
(04:22):
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
(04:45):
into that, you can create a series of steps essentially,
which is flat land. Cherishing their laughing. I would have
been in trouble cherius, like I've been the Guadamala three times.
I know all about step irrigation and then how to
do all this. I would have been like, man, I
wish it were around here. I guess I'll just sit
here until I die, right, Um. So, oh, I'd be
(05:07):
terrible at it. One of the reasons why I'd be
terrible at it is because I will get in my
car to drive five feet from say, store to store.
Do you do that over there at the Edgewood, Like
you've got a target and you'll drive to Kroger. I
haven't been there in a while, but I have. I have. Yeah, yeah, totally.
(05:29):
I mean like I'll walk. I walk more now than
I ever had before in my entire 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 there. A terrible stripper. I would make both terrible. Okay, yeah,
(05:50):
well I know what Aaron Cooper is going to make
this time 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.
(06:11):
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
(06:35):
Trump wine, Trump line, 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 a spanking 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
(06:56):
lay it in like a hammock and fold that over
a hammock like thing and then and 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 and Guatemala 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
(07:17):
I gotta do more of that. And you got back
here and you're like, give me a 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
(07:37):
bundle of sticks that guys carrying. There was a bustle
in his head drawn So um Srpas 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 yak milk and yack meat, yeack. They everywhere,
(08:01):
but they carry things everywhere. Um with the acts they
and they they are basically a mountain, their mountain folk.
They had. 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's no formalized education. Um, they just lived.
(08:24):
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 mandous and
everest with tin signor sharpa to summit to summit, what
I say, I send? Yeah, I mean, what's this? You
(08:46):
gotta get to the top, right or else? What? He
just blew sixty five grand That's about how much it
cost the day. So through his foundation in later years,
he he became to love the uh peaceful Buddhist of
of the shirt of people there, and so he's like,
you know, and except the foundation, we're gonna do things
like bring some schools, bring some hospitals, give these kids
(09:08):
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 it's kind of hard
to get there. So um, they're they're doing the 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,
(09:29):
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
(09:49):
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 serpa? That was Alexander Kellis, not tensign Or, not
Sir Edmond Hillary. Right, Well, ten Signor was as far
(10:10):
too modest. I'm under the impression to have been like,
you want to get up Everest, you get yourself a
serpa sherpa store. They're not big self promoters. The English
have been the biggest promoters of um sherpas and um.
Alexander kellis what's his name? He tried to make it
up Everest and failed. But um, there was a there
(10:32):
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,
(10:54):
just that doesn't mean that you can go up any
other side and make it up easy. Right. So the
place where the the Sherpa live is actually a pretty
good way to get up Everest, but it was closed off.
Nepal 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,
(11:17):
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 uh, when India began uh colonizing,
(11:40):
I'm sorry, when England began colonizing India. Darjeeling across the
eastern border of Nepal was a big popular tourist 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 Englishman saying I
(12:01):
can now get in here to ascend and 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,
(12:24):
the Western climbing community, to the Sherpa, and in short order,
Um Sherpas became extremely famous after, like you said, Sir
Edmund Hillary uh summitted 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
(12:45):
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 there. They
were the last ones and they just kept on go.
But yes, it was tens Ignore 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,
(13:09):
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, Yeah, they were no longer confused with
al pacas. By in popular culture, people were like, oh,
they're a group of people, literally, the people from the east,
that's right. And they, like you said, don't they're not
(13:31):
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
(13:54):
true because when uh, 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. He wasn't British,
(14:16):
so technically he wasn't a a citizen of Great Britain
and neither was tens ignore 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,
(14:37):
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 think about two rand
(15:00):
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
(15:20):
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 dichotomy between
how the Serpa view Mount Everest and how they interact
with it. That the Western influence kind of puts them
(15:43):
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 him
for two grand sure, but you might as well go
(16:05):
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
(16:27):
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 um quote warm and friendly living.
(16:51):
How about that? Yeah? And then Hillary shoved him back down.
He's like, quiet to get out of my picture. Right, No, Gay,
here's your medal. 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
(17:12):
there trying to climbate. Um. We did talk about pollution
there now, and so the very thing that brings the
Tibetan Buddhist Scherpa's enlightenment is also kind of denigrated the area. Somewhat. Yeah, well,
it's about twenty people pass through that area per year,
and now you can go play pool. You have internet access,
(17:35):
you have the trappings of modern living, and you also
have the drawbacks of modern living. Deforestation, yeah, pollution, yeah, exploitation,
that kind of stuff. Al Right, that's right, And this
is what we should point out in uh Sagara Maatha
National Park where about thirtys live and sagar Matha is
the word for Everest, right, the the SRPA themselves call
(18:00):
um Everest Chomo Lungma, Chimo Lungma, chumba womba. 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 repos. Yeah, we
can talk about Edmund Hillary all day long, but you
(18:20):
never hear about Appa Serpa. 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 Chaherri Sharpa. Yeah, camped on the summit of Mount
Everest for twenty one hours without oxygen. Usually what happens
(18:41):
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 and disposing. I'm really high.
Who else there's a lock Lockpa Galu Sherpa who holds
the world record for the fastest mount Everest um sent
(19:02):
ten hours fifty six minutes in 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. And then there's Pessang Lambu Schrpa,
(19:23):
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,
(19:44):
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.
(20:04):
And and evidently, um, when the husband, if the husband
is that the sharpa 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
(20:26):
her 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 the spa, right, there are people
from the east, but that's in reference to where you
(20:49):
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 that
is off the rail, do you think the sharp I
have it bad with not getting any recognition. There's also
(21:10):
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 and other outerwear. Yeah. And there's an actual
international porters group, right, yeah, protection group that are advocates
(21:33):
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 remiss to do a podcast on the
serpa and Everest and Hillary Um and not mention the Yetti.
I don't know much about the YETI I didn't look
at that. So the Himalayas are the home of the Yetti,
the abominable snowman. It's another way to put it, which
(21:55):
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, but I didn't look
into it. No, it is pretty much. 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
(22:18):
the Himalayas. It's like in the Empire, like come off,
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
is actually a believer in the yetti. He went back
(22:40):
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. 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,
(23:02):
you have taught me something, my friend. Thank you for that,
because I couldn't figure out how to wrap this one out.
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 this way. Well, think about this.
(23:25):
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 thod people. Now it's down to thirty,
like you said, in them in the park right. Uh
the the there was a National geographic survey of Sherpas
(23:51):
saying are you concerned about Western influences on your culture?
And they were like not overly? Can you heard me?
The teeth over remote you're sitting on it. If you
have any mountain dew or so, that's a spas. If
you want to read more, Um, there's actually some more
in there, especially um, more on the Buddhist religion. I
(24:13):
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 Christen Kner of stuff Mom never told you.
That's right, that's true. Excellent podcast. Yes it is a
great and we did a great job at south By
(24:35):
Southwest 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 that most of the Disney dirt we got wasn't
very good. We got a bunch of Yeah, there's really
nothing going on there. There's underground tunnels, but that's no
(24:56):
big deal. And it's really not like you guys think.
We find only 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,
(25:17):
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
(25:40):
with one another after hours. I can't imagine how clean
such table might be, but many cast members have been
known to participate in the tradition simply for the sake
of being part of the legends. For like the Mile
High Club. I guess on my attraction, the Jungle Cruise,
it said that one can't be a real skipper until
(26:01):
they have urinated into the river. No, she says, I
suspect it as much about you know, you can, you
can create the uh what what is it the most
what happens happiest place on Earth? But if you staff
it with board and nihilistic twenty year old, it's going
(26:22):
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 out
of sheer logistics. But I do know some women who
have managed to become real skips. I think it'd be
(26:42):
more physics than logistics, she says. The mechanics foggles 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
(27:04):
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 for my time as
a jungle cruise skipper. I'd be happy to share. Keep
up the great work from m Well. I would love
to hear the off the record ones. What is her name? Yeah,
(27:27):
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 Um, Chuck, Josh, have you got
anything else? I'm done? All right? Um? What should we
call for here? How about if you've ascended Everest it's okay. Um.
(27:50):
If you are interested in your state succeeding 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
(28:11):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the how stuff works dot Com home page. M HM
brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you 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. Didn't I
just say Sherpa? No, he said welcome to the podcast.
(00:21):
Why would you say welcome to the Sherpa 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 to ignore Gay Bryant. Yeah, yeah, Chuck,
(00:42):
we're talking about sherp today. Yeah. Is it Sharpa or sharps?
Have no idea because I see both in this article.
I do as well. All right, let's find out, shall we?
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
(01:04):
sure this won't make it in. You never know, they'll
never make it in. Have you ever seen 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 was too. What was they 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
(01:26):
to meet Marian for the first time after like ten
years after Jiltinger. 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 was it? I'm pretty sure he
(01:50):
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 boop, and it's like takes him to Nepal. Yeah,
all right, so let's call him a Scherpa. So scher
Buzz is plural of Serpa. That's what I thought. I thought,
so too. Um. The Srpa people are actually pretty fascinating.
(02:14):
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
(02:37):
is because the Serpas 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
(02:57):
that podcast. But Josh, you're right. They might grated from
Tibet from the province of Calm to the northeast corner
of Nepal around the sixteenth century because of warfare. Yeah,
and I as I understand, they're very peaceful people, oh
very so they would have been fleeing warfare, I would say, so,
(03:17):
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 was good. And
they could grow wheat and buckwheat at the time, and
that's about all they could grow, but that was enough.
Right later on, potatoes really changed the way they do
(03:38):
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 Cumboo Valley, which is higher up actually
(04:01):
then um the Solu area, and it's about um, between
eleven thousand and thirteen feet and they're like, this is
a little too high. Everybody is a little sick. So
they're gonna move a little further down to the Solu
region between it's still extremely high. Um, it's still extremely rocky,
and they whip this part of the Himalayas into shape.
(04:22):
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
(04:45):
into that, you can create a series of steps essentially,
which is flat land. Cherishing their laughing. I would have
been in trouble cherius, like I've been the Guadamala three times.
I know all about step irrigation and then how to
do all this. I would have been like, man, I
wish it were around here. I guess I'll just sit
here until I die, right, Um. So, oh, I'd be
(05:07):
terrible at it. One of the reasons why I'd be
terrible at it is because I will get in my
car to drive five feet from say, store to store.
Do you do that over there at the Edgewood, Like
you've got a target and you'll drive to Kroger. I
haven't been there in a while, but I have. I have. Yeah, yeah, totally.
(05:29):
I mean like I'll walk. I walk more now than
I ever had before in my entire 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 there. A terrible stripper. I would make both terrible. Okay, yeah,
(05:50):
well I know what Aaron Cooper is going to make
this time 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.
(06:11):
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
(06:35):
Trump wine, Trump line, 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 a spanking 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
(06:56):
lay it in like a hammock and fold that over
a hammock like thing and then and 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 and Guatemala 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
(07:17):
I gotta do more of that. And you got back
here and you're like, give me a 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
(07:37):
bundle of sticks that guys carrying. There was a bustle
in his head drawn So um Srpas 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 yak milk and yack meat, yeack. They everywhere,
(08:01):
but they carry things everywhere. Um with the acts they
and they they are basically a mountain, their mountain folk.
They had. 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's no formalized education. Um, they just lived.
(08:24):
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 mandous and
everest with tin signor sharpa to summit to summit, what
I say, I send? Yeah, I mean, what's this? You
(08:46):
gotta get to the top, right or else? What? He
just blew sixty five grand That's about how much it
cost the day. So through his foundation in later years,
he he became to love the uh peaceful Buddhist of
of the shirt of people there, and so he's like,
you know, and except the foundation, we're gonna do things
like bring some schools, bring some hospitals, give these kids
(09:08):
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 it's kind of hard
to get there. So um, they're they're doing the 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,
(09:29):
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
(09:49):
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 serpa? That was Alexander Kellis, not tensign Or, not
Sir Edmond Hillary. Right, Well, ten Signor was as far
(10:10):
too modest. I'm under the impression to have been like,
you want to get up Everest, you get yourself a
serpa sherpa store. They're not big self promoters. The English
have been the biggest promoters of um sherpas and um.
Alexander kellis what's his name? He tried to make it
up Everest and failed. But um, there was a there
(10:32):
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,
(10:54):
just that doesn't mean that you can go up any
other side and make it up easy. Right. So the
place where the the Sherpa live is actually a pretty
good way to get up Everest, but it was closed off.
Nepal 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,
(11:17):
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 uh, when India began uh colonizing,
(11:40):
I'm sorry, when England began colonizing India. Darjeeling across the
eastern border of Nepal was a big popular tourist 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 Englishman saying I
(12:01):
can now get in here to ascend and 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,
(12:24):
the Western climbing community, to the Sherpa, and in short order,
Um Sherpas became extremely famous after, like you said, Sir
Edmund Hillary uh summitted 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
(12:45):
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 there. They
were the last ones and they just kept on go.
But yes, it was tens Ignore 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,
(13:09):
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, Yeah, they were no longer confused with
al pacas. By in popular culture, people were like, oh,
they're a group of people, literally, the people from the east,
that's right. And they, like you said, don't they're not
(13:31):
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
(13:54):
true because when uh, 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. He wasn't British,
(14:16):
so technically he wasn't a a citizen of Great Britain
and neither was tens ignore 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,
(14:37):
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 think about two rand
(15:00):
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
(15:20):
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 dichotomy between
how the Serpa view Mount Everest and how they interact
with it. That the Western influence kind of puts them
(15:43):
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 him
for two grand sure, but you might as well go
(16:05):
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
(16:27):
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 um quote warm and friendly living.
(16:51):
How about that? Yeah? And then Hillary shoved him back down.
He's like, quiet to get out of my picture. Right, No, Gay,
here's your medal. 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
(17:12):
there trying to climbate. Um. We did talk about pollution
there now, and so the very thing that brings the
Tibetan Buddhist Scherpa's enlightenment is also kind of denigrated the area. Somewhat. Yeah, well,
it's about twenty people pass through that area per year,
and now you can go play pool. You have internet access,
(17:35):
you have the trappings of modern living, and you also
have the drawbacks of modern living. Deforestation, yeah, pollution, yeah, exploitation,
that kind of stuff. Al Right, that's right, And this
is what we should point out in uh Sagara Maatha
National Park where about thirtys live and sagar Matha is
the word for Everest, right, the the SRPA themselves call
(18:00):
um Everest Chomo Lungma, Chimo Lungma, chumba womba. 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 repos. Yeah, we
can talk about Edmund Hillary all day long, but you
(18:20):
never hear about Appa Serpa. 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 Chaherri Sharpa. Yeah, camped on the summit of Mount
Everest for twenty one hours without oxygen. Usually what happens
(18:41):
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 and disposing. I'm really high.
Who else there's a lock Lockpa Galu Sherpa who holds
the world record for the fastest mount Everest um sent
(19:02):
ten hours fifty six minutes in 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. And then there's Pessang Lambu Schrpa,
(19:23):
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,
(19:44):
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.
(20:04):
And and evidently, um, when the husband, if the husband
is that the sharpa 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
(20:26):
her 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 the spa, right, there are people
from the east, but that's in reference to where you
(20:49):
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 that
is off the rail, do you think the sharp I
have it bad with not getting any recognition. There's also
(21:10):
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 and other outerwear. Yeah. And there's an actual
international porters group, right, yeah, protection group that are advocates
(21:33):
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 remiss to do a podcast on the
serpa and Everest and Hillary Um and not mention the Yetti.
I don't know much about the YETI I didn't look
at that. So the Himalayas are the home of the Yetti,
the abominable snowman. It's another way to put it, which
(21:55):
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, but I didn't look
into it. No, it is pretty much. 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
(22:18):
the Himalayas. It's like in the Empire, like come off,
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
is actually a believer in the yetti. He went back
(22:40):
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. 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,
(23:02):
you have taught me something, my friend. Thank you for that,
because I couldn't figure out how to wrap this one out.
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 this way. Well, think about this.
(23:25):
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 thod people. Now it's down to thirty,
like you said, in them in the park right. Uh
the the there was a National geographic survey of Sherpas
(23:51):
saying are you concerned about Western influences on your culture?
And they were like not overly? Can you heard me?
The teeth over remote you're sitting on it. If you
have any mountain dew or so, that's a spas. If
you want to read more, Um, there's actually some more
in there, especially um, more on the Buddhist religion. I
(24:13):
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 Christen Kner of stuff Mom never told you.
That's right, that's true. Excellent podcast. Yes it is a
great and we did a great job at south By
(24:35):
Southwest 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 that most of the Disney dirt we got wasn't
very good. We got a bunch of Yeah, there's really
nothing going on there. There's underground tunnels, but that's no
(24:56):
big deal. And it's really not like you guys think.
We find only 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,
(25:17):
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
(25:40):
with one another after hours. I can't imagine how clean
such table might be, but many cast members have been
known to participate in the tradition simply for the sake
of being part of the legends. For like the Mile
High Club. I guess on my attraction, the Jungle Cruise,
it said that one can't be a real skipper until
(26:01):
they have urinated into the river. No, she says, I
suspect it as much about you know, you can, you
can create the uh what what is it the most
what happens happiest place on Earth? But if you staff
it with board and nihilistic twenty year old, it's going
(26:22):
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 out
of sheer logistics. But I do know some women who
have managed to become real skips. I think it'd be
(26:42):
more physics than logistics, she says. The mechanics foggles 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
(27:04):
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 for my time as
a jungle cruise skipper. I'd be happy to share. Keep
up the great work from m Well. I would love
to hear the off the record ones. What is her name? Yeah,
(27:27):
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 Um, Chuck, Josh, have you got
anything else? I'm done? All right? Um? What should we
call for here? How about if you've ascended Everest it's okay. Um.
(27:50):
If you are interested in your state succeeding 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
(28:11):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the how stuff works dot Com home page. M HM
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