Post from Tim:
Tengboche: With no roads nearby, the Sherpa porters are to the Khumbu region what trucks are to the American highway. They carry amazing loads up and down the mountains and, unlike their tourist counterparts with fancy $300 backpacks, load their goods into simple baskets carried on their backs and suspended by straps across their foreheads.
I'm constantly amazed by the amount of weight they can carry up steep mountain trails. Look up any trail and you will see a pair of legs sticking out from a bundle of hay larger than a commercial refrigerator. Or perhaps, you will see eight ceiling beams that are 6 x 6 inches wide and 10 feet long. Or four cases of Coke, three 12 kg packages of creamer, and some other heavy miscellaneous items.
Everything here is carried by hand - from the bottled water, to the glass windows in lodges and occasional washer/dryer.
Today we saw the most magnificent example, a 95-kg (209-lb.) television in the Tengboche Monastery's visitor's center. Surely, I asked the staff, this mammoth thing was airlifted up by helicopter? But no, not only was this carried by hand from a small bush airstrip half a day away, it was carried down 650 meters (2,132 ft) and back up 616 meters (2,001 ft). And the load was fought over because the porters were paid 7 rupees per kilo. I had to do the math. For all of his effort, the porter was paid about $9 US!
And you thought your job was hard.
I'm constantly amazed by the amount of weight they can carry up steep mountain trails. Look up any trail and you will see a pair of legs sticking out from a bundle of hay larger than a commercial refrigerator. Or perhaps, you will see eight ceiling beams that are 6 x 6 inches wide and 10 feet long. Or four cases of Coke, three 12 kg packages of creamer, and some other heavy miscellaneous items. Everything here is carried by hand - from the bottled water, to the glass windows in lodges and occasional washer/dryer.
Today we saw the most magnificent example, a 95-kg (209-lb.) television in the Tengboche Monastery's visitor's center. Surely, I asked the staff, this mammoth thing was airlifted up by helicopter? But no, not only was this carried by hand from a small bush airstrip half a day away, it was carried down 650 meters (2,132 ft) and back up 616 meters (2,001 ft). And the load was fought over because the porters were paid 7 rupees per kilo. I had to do the math. For all of his effort, the porter was paid about $9 US!
And you thought your job was hard.
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