A Fistful of Dollars

Rupak Bhattacharya

Category: Article
Date of Publication: Apr 22 , 2022

Just as the pavements of Geneva are supposedly paved with gold, so too is the "yellow brick road" from Base Camp to the summit of Everest paved with dollars.

For that is the only route by which today’s Dorothy, or for that matter Tom, Dick or Harry (Das Pal)*, can make it to the top. Here of course I mean only the guided summit tourists and not the mountaineers.

To refresh the reader's fond childhood memories here are the lines from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", "There were several roads nearby, but it did not take Dorothy long to find the one paved with yellow bricks. Within a short time she was walking briskly... her silver shoes tinkling merrily on the hard yellow road-bed."

Fast forward to the spring of 2022, and you would find many a Dorothy and Harry (Das Pal)*, their jumars and carabiners tinkling, as they are shepherded up and down the route, clipped to a rope.

Courtesy: Dreamway Destinations

The "land of Oz" is here the land of Nepal Himal, equally wonderful, awesome and fascinating. But a paradigm shift has taken place over the years. The "Wonderful Wizard", of our schooldays, though still wonderful, is now well versed in finances and marketing, and no long waits for a potential Dorothy/Harry to find him at the end of the road. He is now on the net too and waiting for them to click their mouse, and abracadabra, he is there. Only now he is known as the Sherpa, and he is there to welcome them, with a khada and a welcome drink, right at the beginning of their journey.

Today’s Dorothy and Harry (Das Pal), to make their vicarious adventure possible, can not do without this wizard. They need him, literally, at every step of the way and even at all the stops in between. The Wiz and his team not only ensures that the "yellow brick road" is navigable and safe, he will also feed them and clothe them and house them in comfort, and make sure they have enough bottled oxygen to keep them alive and functional. In fact while the Wizard has long ago graduated from the kindergarten and is now a Masters, the Dorothy’s and Harry's have regressed back to kindergarten and it is quite possible that some might even need to have their diapers changed.

Courtesy: Alanarnette.com

The Wizard is now a professional Sherpa and his expertise and services have to be paid for in dollars. The services on offer could range from basic to exclusive depending on how much one pays. The Dept. Of Tourism, Govt. of Nepal, too have to be paid a fixed sum for pre-booking a peak, the sum varying from about five hundred to ten thousand dollars, depending on the popularity and altitude of the peak.

Taken together it is a tidy sum, to say the least, if you happen to be a guided summit tourist. To put it in perspective, till the third week of April 2022, a total of 833 individuals from 73 different countries, have booked 23 peaks in the Nepal Himalayas, for this spring season, for a total sum of more than three and a half million dollars (as on 20th April, 2022). To this has to be added the expenses for the services of the wizard Sherpa and his Agency, a sum anywhere probably between ten to twenty five thousand dollars per person.

On taking a realistic view of the larger picture one realizes that this quantum growth in summit tourism is not only inevitable but unavoidable too. It is an important source of foreign exchange for Nepal and the source of livelihood for the Sherpa and porter community. And since tourists are a dime a dozen and these dozens pay in dollars and dollars are not dimes, it makes sound economic sense to promote and facilitate this service industry. It is axiomatic that the bird in hand is worth more, though the bird could sometimes make a mess of your hands and the environment. As for the tourists and mountaineers, it remains a matter of individual choices, predicated by his/her interpretation of the true nature and spirit of adventure and alpinism, and how deep are his/her pockets.

Courtesy: Lakpa Sherpa

This dichotomy, for there really is one, between guided tourist climbers and mountaineers has grave connotations and consequences in my part of the world. Here, unfortunately, the distinction has not only been blurred, but the tourist summitter is feted and promoted, even financially, and accorded a star status, even by the media, and, by either ignorance or design or both, the true practitioners of alpinism, as the world knows it, goes unsung. This definitely has not only a detrimental and demotivating effect on these alpinists, but it also sets a dangerous precedence and generates role-models, albeit fake, who if emulated by quasi-mountaineers, as is increasingly to be seen, will inevitably lead / has led to disastrous consequences.

This high altitude adventure tourism industry has now reached near perfection, and runs smoothly each season, barring occasional hiccups brought on by the unpredictable terrain, the weather and often the incompetence of the tourist clients at altitude. Nevertheless, the Wizard ensures that his clients, the summit tourists, get commensurate services, because a satisfied customer is the best advertisement for future clients. The efficiency of the system can be gauged by the fact that, on a single day in 2012, the wizards put 234 clients on top of Everest.

Nevertheless, it needs to be reiterated that, as Stephen Venables so succinctly put it, "Adventure tourism is often an oxymoron. Adventure is all about risk, uncertainty and self-determination, not buying a predictable packaged commodity."

Reinhold Messner was more blunt, "Traditional alpinism is slowly disappearing... it's business and tourism, it has nothing to do with alpinism... in the morning, the guides come and tell you it’s time to get up and give you a nice soup... you wear these shoes, put on those crampons, like in kindergarten, they go on Everest now."

With a little better than average physiology, fair weather and a "Fistful of Dollars" the tourist can today buy for oneself an adventure of sorts and, if lucky, a summit certificate too. And "For a Few Dollars More" he/she could even ensure personalised services from a Wizard.

Whether that makes them "The Good, The Bad (or) The Ugly" mountaineer is for the readers to decide.

*Harry (Das Pal) is usually spelled as Haridas Pal. In the colloquial parlance of Calcutta, "to call someone by this name was simply a reference to grandeur. It later came to imply someone suffering from delusions of grandeur. And then through generations of use, or abuse, the pejorative slant stuck". (The Telegraph)