I was standing along a trail admiring a huge mani wall--Buddhist prayers chiseled into stone--when a monster mound of water jugs stepped into my view. I knew that, even in the thin air of the high Himalaya and even at a spiritual spot like where I stood, water jugs don’t move through space all on their own. Then I saw legs below the water jugs and caught a glimpse of a porter’s face.
Nepal is like that. One minute you're seeing an apparition. You blink, and reality intrudes.
Busy thoroughfares, these routes in Nepal’s mountains. Unlike the trails in the wilderness areas and national parks near my home in Washington State, the footpaths in the Himalayas are not just for recreation or sport. Nepal’s trails mean business: They are the only link between villages, the way food and other trade items get transported.
That movement of goods does not happen easily. I watched in amazement as, day after day, porters passed us on the trail carrying what seemed to me to be backbreaking loads of timber. Our guide talked with the porters and learned they had started at Namche Bazaar (elevation 11,300 feet) and would carry the beams to Dingboche (14, 300 feet.) The porters carried 230 pounds and were paid the equivalent of a few dollars for their toil.
We talked with one young man in his early twenties who had already been working as a porter for over 10 years, a doko (basket) and namlo (tumpline) as much a part of his life as a car or an iPod might be for an American. And while Leah and I took great care in choosing the hiking boots we’d wear on the trek, we saw porters --many of them-- who carried their loads wearing sandals or flip-flops.
Never again will I refer to any job I do making photographs as “hard work.”
