Conquistadors of the Useless (39 page)

Thus Hinduism contains diverse and even contradictory elements, unity coming from a few general principles. One of these is polytheism, a belief in many gods, from whom each chooses a favourite to embody them all. Another is metempsychosis, the theory that the soul is not attached to any one body, but is successively reincarnated; though a very holy life may permit escape from this infernal cycle to the peace of Nirvana. Nirvana itself is not envisaged as any kind of a paradise on Muslim lines, but simply the eternal beatitude of loss of self in union with the universal spirit.

Buddhism is really an offshoot of Hinduism. One of the Hindu holy books says: ‘To adore Buddha is to adore Shiva', and an ancient Buddhist work recommends the worship of Shiva. Buddha in fact figures in the Hindu pantheon as the eighth incarnation of Vishnu. In its original form his teaching is really a rule of life leading towards escape from the passions and the attainment of Nirvana. Only later, and only among the sect known as the Mahayana, or ‘great vehicle', was Buddha deified and Nirvana transformed into the sort of pleasant paradise understandable by the masses.

In Nepal, apart from the interpenetration of Hinduism and Buddhism, both religions have been influenced by the ancient pagan customs of the first Asiatic settlers, and some of the Tantrist and Shaktist sects even give preponderance to these beliefs. And of course among the herd, as among equivalent Christian populations, religious spirituality often gives place to a sort of idolatry. Thus there is such a multiplicity of practices that one could almost say each caste is a faith in its own right. I have had much opportunity to note the extreme diversity of food taboos, for example. Some groups are so strictly vegetarian that they will not even take eggs; others will eat just a little goat or mutton; others again, such as the Tamangs, will go so far as to eat buffalo meat. Only the Sherpas and Bothias along the Tibetan border will kill and eat cattle, or rather yaks, and even then they do it clandestinely, such acts being crimes punishable by several years in prison.

In other respects, however, the Nepalese are more unified, and among these are agricultural methods and building styles. A notable characteristic is the complete absence of the wheel. Once beyond the Siwalik hills there is not so much as a wagon or even a cart. Everything is carried, and usually on human backs.

Being so overpopulated, Nepal has gradually become an extremely functionalised country. In some areas literally not a square yard of soil is wasted. Even the steepest slopes have been transformed into paddy fields, to the extent that a terrace three feet across may have a supporting wall eight or nine feet high. Paths are often no more than a foot or two across, so as not to waste growing space. Doubtless with the same object animals for riding and beasts of burden have all been suppressed. To substitute human for animal labour in a country where the former is superabundant is no more than logical, especially since trained men can carry heavier weights than animals for a given number of calories. Only in the highest valleys are animals kept for transport; there they are pastured on slopes so steep and rocky as to be uncultivable.

With the single exception of a mule train across the Siwaliks I have never seen a loaded beast in the whole of the foothills, and the only riders have been officers or other high-ranking dignitaries. The transport of goods is of course a necessity in any but the most primitive societies, and Nepal is no exception to the rule. Since economic and topographical circumstances make animals and vehicles impossible, the inhabitants have literally taken the matter on their own shoulders, and human transport, laborious and wasteful as it is, has become one of the bases of the social structure.

The technique of carrying has been perfected in Nepal beyond anything known in Europe. From the moment they can stand children are taught to support loads by means of a strap passed across the forehead, from which is suspended a carrying basket. This apparently rudimentary method is very difficult to acquire unless one has been brought up to it, and I have never heard of any traveller mastering it fully. In order to support the weight without tiring the neck muscles, the force has to be kept exactly in line with the vertebral column, and only a lifelong familiarity enables this to be done over uneven ground. I have personally tried very hard to master the art, but my troubles were so obvious that the porters, with typical humour, nicknamed me ‘the French Sherpa', a title always accompanied with roars of ironic laughter. In the end I adopted a compromise method utilising both shoulder straps and a head band.

Thanks to these head bands, then, the Nepalese carry unbelievable weights over great distances. By the age of eight or nine they can already transport more than their own weight for several kilometres. The strongest and fittest men are capable of unheard-of performances.

Fifteen years ago I worked as a porter on the construction of the Envers des Aiguilles cabin in the Mont Blanc range. Twice each day we would do a journey that takes a lightly-laden man just under two hours, so that our total labour added up to the equivalent of over seven hours going in normal conditions, half of which was with very heavy loads that slowed us down considerably. Naturally, the days were hard and long. In such conditions I rarely managed to carry more than 120 pounds., and often a good deal less. All my mates were sturdy lads who had made a speciality of portering for the sake of the high wages, yet few could cope with more than 130 pounds. Only a gigantic Italian, six foot four and weighing over 220 pounds himself, would manage 145 pounds, and even 155 pounds on exceptional occasions. Yet in Nepal this phenomenal athlete, using the inefficient method of shoulder-straps, would be made to look ridiculous by men a good sixty or seventy pounds lighter.

For the approach march to Annapurna a team of professional porters offered us its services. Some of them were quite big men, and all looked supremely fit. Their legs were particularly impressive, with tanned thighs as muscular as cart horses' emerging from the whiteness of their loincloths. There was not an ounce of fat on them anywhere, however, and the heaviest of them cannot have weighed more than 175 pounds. They sized up our loads, the average weight of which was 80 or 90 pounds, with an air of some disdain, then announced that they were not interested in the job. I was rather surprised at hearing this, and asked if the charges were too heavy. With a roar of laughter they replied that, on the contrary, they were so light that the wages would not be worth their while. Somewhat nettled, I declared that there could be no question of splitting up the loads and that we were not prepared to pay extra wages. To this I received the astonishing response that it would be a bit on the heavy side, but if we were willing to pay double the money they would carry double the load. They were as good as their word: transporting 170 pounds twelve or fifteen miles a day and laughing and talking as they went, they were never the last into camp.

Later, in exceptional circumstances, I was even to see Tibetan and Nepalese porters carrying 200 pounds over steep grass and scree at an altitude of twenty thousand feet, taking spells with the charge between two or three of them. And these were not even professionals but local peasants, many of them rather skinny-looking and weighing no more than 130 pounds.

In 1950 Nepal had only just begun to open its gates to western influence, and the total number of European visitors had not exceeded a hundred, most of whom had gone no farther than the capital. To get there they had either had to ride on horseback or in a litter, or walk, there being no vehicular road linking it to India. Oddly enough, they found a few cars there before them. Had they been parachuted in, or transported in small parts? Nothing of the sort: they had been carried over the mountain trails complete, lashed to joists supported on the backs of hundreds of men, like the stones of the Pyramids. To anyone who knows the narrow staircases which pass for tracks over the Siwaliks and Mahabharats the idea of carrying a Rolls along them is almost inconceivable. Such examples help one to realise the amazing pitch of efficiency to which the Nepalese have raised the technique of human portaging, and, by the same token, how Nepal in 1950 was still living in another age.

Although, as I remarked earlier, the various peoples of Nepal are linked by a common culture and tradition, those who live along the frontiers of Tibet are an exception. By race, by religion and by culture they resemble the Tibetans far more closely than their compatriots, and despite the high ranges which fence them from each other they keep in close contact with their relations whenever the season permits. Dialects, clothes and manners are closely similar on either side of the border, and the form of religion, Lamaic or Tantric Buddhism, is identical.

The doctrines of the Buddha, in a sense more philosophical than religious, lost a good deal of their original definition in the process of being adopted by these primitive mountaineers, who mixed them up together with ancient beliefs of their own. Lamaism today is for the majority of believers a perfected form of paganism in which magic practices play an important role. The well-known prayer-wheel is a mild form of it, but these are not in any case thought of as having the same type of significance as Christian prayers. Religious mottos engraved on walls or written on the inside of rolls of paper are not always intended to have any precise effect, and their symbolic meaning has often been lost, but their frequent movement in space is supposed to have a generally beneficent influence. This comes less from the meaning of the words than from the magic power of the movement.

Both in character and physique the Tibetans of Nepal differ considerably from the other inhabitants of the country. They vary a good deal in size, but as a rule they are small and quite frail-looking. Their rather unathletic appearance makes their stamina and load-carrying abilities all the more astonishing. Living as they do at high altitude in an environment hostile to man, they only survive thanks to an extreme frugality. Apart from a few rare exceptions they never wash at all. Yet in spite of all their difficulties they are the jolliest people you could hope to meet, and any excuse will do for a drink and a dance. Intelligent, lively and full of initiative, there is a certain abandon about their attitude to life which is in contrast to the slightly heavy reserve and tidiness of their compatriots among the foothills.

The most numerous and interesting of these frontier tribes is undoubtedly the Sherpas, whose name is practically synonymous with Himalayan exploration. Literature, the Press and the cinema have combined to make them famous, but few seem to have any real idea of what they are.

The Sherpas come from the Sola Khumbu valley, which drains the south-western flank of the Everest range. A few of them also live in the upper reaches of neighbouring valleys. They are divided into two slightly differing castes, one living in the upper part of Sola Khumbu between eleven and fourteen thousand feet, the other, far more numerous, in its lower reaches. It is difficult to estimate their number even approximately, but it may be something between three and six thousand.

One thing is certain: there are too many of them to live off their few laboriously-cultivated plots and their small herds of yaks. Quite a few live off the caravan trade over the twenty-thousand-foot Nangpa La, which leads from Sola Khumbu into Tibet. They are quite gifted commercially, and some of them become well-off merchants, but for the most part they turn into yak-drivers or simple porters. Their profession takes them far afield into India and Tibet (the closing of the Tibetan frontier by the Chinese has badly upset their economy) and it would seem that this roving life has given the Sherpas their vivacity, adaptability and taste for adventure. Despite the important openings which the trade between India and Tibet has given them there is not enough to go round in their native valley, and a large proportion of them are forced to emigrate.

Towards the end of the last century the British built the little town of Darjeeling on a rather unusual site, a high hill dominating the plains of Bengal, close to the borders of Nepal and Sikkim. Situated at over eight thousand feet, it was designed to enable the families of British administrators to escape the furnace of the months preceding the monsoon in the fresh air of the mountains. For reasons hard to understand this region was relatively little inhabited, despite the overcrowding a few miles away in Nepal. The building of the town, and subsequently the clearing and working of vast tea plantations, provided an important source of employment in the area. Most of the labourers came from Nepal. Many of these were hard-working, disciplined Raïs and Thamans, but among them also were long-haired, turbulent little men all in rags, looking rather like the Bhotias of Tibet: these were the Sherpas. They had walked for three weeks to find this new land of promise.

At first, no doubt, the British did not make much distinction between them and their various cousins, but before long events were to display their special character. Even before the First World War English climbers had thought of attempting Mount Everest, but the time was not ripe. The idea continued to simmer during the war years, and in 1921 a reconnaissance party was organised. Permission was obtained from Tibet to cross its territory, and the expedition set out from Darjeeling, turning Nepal by the south-east, to explore the north side of the mountain.

Altogether six expeditions followed the same route between the two wars. Almost all of them got very high despite their archaic equipment, and some even exceeded 28,000 feet. They were astonishingly large-scale by modern standards, running in certain cases to nearly a thousand porters. Naturally a fair proportion of these were recruited at Darjeeling from among the Tibetan immigrant labourers and it was not long before the Sherpas came to the fore as high-altitude porters. Now there is no great difference between the various Himalayan races as regards their load-carrying powers or their resistance to the physical effects of high altitude, and it follows that the superiority of the Sherpas was really a moral one. They showed no fear of angering the gods of the high summits, like their Bhotia and Bouthanais cousins, but went enthusiastically with their European employers wherever they led. Their courage soon became legendary, and the British called them the ‘tigers'.
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They proved honest, straightforward and full of initiative, with an excellent sense of humour (not too easily found among Indians or other Nepalese); and rarer still, they had a real code of honour and devotion to duty. Whatever the dangers, they followed their sahibs to the end.