Happy Sherp-day!

First off, my apologies - this is a long post and there won't be many fantastic mountain views (although I guess it's all relative)

For the past week I've been intending to do a post about Sherpas. Just yesterday was our 6th straight day of testing our Sherpa-only treks (we will test more but they will be interspersed among Westerners) and it seemed apt. Then my birthday came and took me by surprise and I thought that perhaps it would be a more suitable post. However, by the end of the day I realized quite instantly how it was only fitting to do both and I'll tell you why:

Sherpa trek C just bound for Everest Base Camp

First off, to clear a common misconception: not all Sherpas climb mountains. The word "Sherpa" does not refer to an occupation but rather a people, originally of Chinese/Tibetan origin who crossed over the mountain passes into the Solukhumbu region many hundreds of years ago and have certainly inhabited high altitude areas for much longer than that. They are incredibly interesting from a scientific perspective because although many people live at altitude in places like South America or Ethiopia, no population has been so high for so long. As we study them here it is fascinating to notice the physiological differences, some of which are quite intuitive and some are surprising. We are gathering a great amount of data and it may be many years before the entire picture can be put together!

Chongba Sherpa on the exercise bike

And so, when I awoke on my 27th birthday at 6:00 am to test a trekking group of 14 Sherpas you would imagine that I must have been giddy with excitement! Putting sarcasm aside, testing has been difficult - fraught with language barriers, unfamiliarity with testing equipment, and it was quite difficult to test men and women who never learned to ride a bicycle. While the science is exciting I think that we are all looking forward to this weekend when we won't be running the lab from 6:00 in the morning to sometimes well after dinner. It did help, however, that some of the lab team decided to start the day off extra classy.

Namche lab puttin' on the Ritz

We were instructed to bring shirts and bow-ties for weekly classy dinners. As we haven't had much time to plan such a dinner, this was our first occasion to don them. The Sherpa in the middle is Nyima Tsering Sherpa. He is about the 10th Nima Sherpa I've met in the last three weeks; Nima means Sunday and many Sherpas are named after the day of the week they were born - Sherpa is the common surname that all of these people share. His grandfather was a sheep herder in the Khumbu until the 50s when we began work as a mail-runner for mountaineering expeditions. His father worked his way from expedition cook to porter to mountain guide and eventually worked as a Sirdar (expedition leader). Nyima now runs a cafe in Namche - the 8848 Cafe which sells fantastic chocolate cake. He says that there is a lot of resistance in his generation, especially from the women, towards mountaineering because of the countless Sherpas who have lost their lives there.

Nyima Tsering Sherpa

Nyima came up to lab as a translator for the 6 days while we were testing Sherpas. I knew him for less than a week and he brought me a present - a DVD called Sherpas: The True Heroes of Mount Everest. Nyima has also been feeding me information about the climbing in the area and is my daily tutor in Nepalese and Sherpa language. He isn't my only new friend up here who has been more than generous:

A plate of 27 Momos - steamed dumplings similar to dim sum - that the kitchen made  for me

Lhakpa Sonam Sherpa and my birthday scarf

Lhakpa Sonam Sherpa runs the Hotel Sherwi Khangba, my home for 2 months. He is profoundly deaf, having suffered meningitis many years ago. The walls of almost every room in his lodge and restaurant are adorned with incredible postcards and postcards that he took himself. Not only is the photography stunning but the locations from which he has taken them are remote. He is also a very generous host. No one told him when I received the plate of momos for lunch and he came to me just before dinner quite distressed that he hadn't been around. He then gave me a linen scarf and a carved wooden necklace from town. 

The lab team has been great as well. Aside from having a large room of people sing me Happy Birthday at least three or four separate times, my wonderful lab manager Kay Mitchell gave me about 2 hours off in the afternoon to do as I pleased. I went running. I traced the same route that we hiked about two weeks ago up towards Everest and left towards Khumjung and Kunde. It was so fun and refreshing to run through those small villages off the main Everest trekking route as small children spouted short English phrases or greeted me with "Namaste" or "Tashi Dele" (Sherpa for "Namaste"). After Khunde I got often into a series of small yak trails and grazing areas that took me back into Namche proper. 

Foggy afternoon trail-run, Khunde can be seen faintly in the background at right

The beautiful thing about getting lost in the fog around these parts (not that I got lost at all, I knew where I was the whole time) is that all you really have to do is stop and listen for the sound of the bells that the yaks always wear. They know exactly where the trails are.

To sum up, those who know me know that I usually downplay my birthday but it was hard not to enjoy the celebration with new friends here in Namche. I'm incredibly blessed to be here and I send my love to all the friends and family I couldn't be with!

Tashi dele