Word: sherpa
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Among the mountain climbers who swarm into Nepal each year to see what heights they may surmount, there is one rule of thumb about the hiring of native porters. For climbs under 18,000 ft., the mountaineers usually pick their men from among the 5,000 Sherpa families living in the Nepalese area of Solo Khumbu. But for high-altitude work, the most able Sherpas are those who live in Darjeeling, across the border in India. Most of these men come from families who emigrated from Nepal in 1921 and got their rugged training in the Indian and Tibetan Himalayas...
Shortly before a Russian dog became the highest form of animal life (see SCIENCE), Sherpa Guide Tensing Norkay, co-conqueror of Mount Everest, trotted out one of a Tibetan breed that formerly contended for the altitude mark. Raised in the high Himalayas, Tensing's homebred personal pet, a Lhasa Apso, was a notable attraction at a London kennel club show...
...exploratory expedition tackled Manaslu, but the Japanese had a tough time even reaching the base of the mountain, because the Indians were reluctant to let foreigners get close to sensitive Tibet and its Red Chinese visitors. By spring, though, the advance guard had chosen the north col near the Sherpa village of Sama as the only possible route, and the first climbers started upward. Monsoons slowed them and they finally quit, their supplies exhausted. In the spring of 1954 the Japanese returned. They had doubled their supplies but this time their opposition was tougher. Outside Sama, angry villagers threatened them...
...superskeptical Indian journalist named S. M. Goswami brought out a potboiler last year, charging that neither Sir Edmund Hillary nor his famed Sherpa Guide Tenzing ever set foot atop Mount Everest, but had actually turned back 800 feet from the summit. Chuckled Everest's Co-conqueror Hillary: "The man is making a bit of a goat of himself." In Calcutta last week, Author Goswami, deeply affronted, butted back at Sir Edmund with a 100,000 rupee ($20,000) libel and slander suit. Back home in New Zealand, where he is now planning an Antarctic expedition, part-time Beekeeper Hillary...
...Lemmings. In France in August, whole industries (automobiles, steel) shut down, whole streets are shuttered, in a migration as inexorable as lemmings. Railroad stations are loud with the shrill confusion that only the French can produce, each family laden with an amount of baggage that would stagger a Sherpa-packing cases, bicycles, scooters, cooking stoves, tents, valises, net bags, fishing tackle, steamer trunks, camping equipment...