Moving On Up

Eric Hansen dabbles in being a sherpa and finds the meaning of the universe, or something close to it. An excerpt from the Outside article:

A dhoko-naamlo isn't fun. It's an ancient tradition from a simpler, more Hobbesian time. The dhoko, a cone-shaped basket with a flat bottom, is woven out of bamboo slats to be roughly as tall as your torso. The naamlo, or tumpline, is a section of rope with a three-inch-wide head strap, generally cut from a flour or rice sack. Wrap the naamlo around the back side of the dhoko; position it just in front of the crown of your head; insert anvil collection.

Aside from the fact that you can get one for roughly a dollar in any Nepali village, the dhoko-naamlo's main virtue is that it allows one to carry backbreaking amounts of gear. In treks like ours, 25 kilograms, or 55 pounds, is the minimum any porter will carry. Twelve-year-olds routinely carry 20 pounds between villages, and in an exhaustive 1999 study of 635 porters, the average weight was 160 pounds. A trekking porter earns between $3.50 and $6 per day and the equivalent of a day's wages in tips per week—assuming he gets them. According to Porters' Progress, a fledgling cooperative based in Kathmandu, guides frequently steal their porters' tips. Despite this, almost every Nepali ethnic group works as trekking porters: Sherpa, Tamang, Magar, even the Tharu, whose home in the 300-foot-high lowlands certainly gives them no historical or biological advantage. I would be the first porter I knew of from Weak Rich Westerner caste.