Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmni4h wrote

Reply to comment by Goodmindtothrowitall in [WP] It’s a common know fact that if a person dies climbing Mount Everest the body is left on the mountain. That’s why a serial killer likes to disguise himself as a Sherpa in order to hide his victims. by jgeezy235

Sherpa is both a specific name for an ethnic and language group, and a general job title. However, the two are wrapped up in each other in really fraught ways that I (not Nepali, not a Sherpa) am gonna try to be really careful about, and still probably make mistakes.

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary were the first people to climb Everest. Norgay was a Sherpa. Climbing Everest requires a lot of support, and because of Norgay and Sherpa’s familiarity with Everest, foreign climbers overwhelming preferred hiring Sherpas to be high-altitude guides and porters. This kind of continued to this day, to the extent that non-ethnically Sherpa Nepali will try to pass as Sherpa to employers and even coworkers.

However. Your serial killer would have to be at least Nepali, and possibly actually Sherpa, to pass as a high-altitude porter.

There’s not a lot of sustainable jobs in Nepal. Being a mountain guide is unspeakably dangerous and demanding. It also pays a lot. There’s a lot of complicated feelings around the work. But the fact remains that because of the money, and the opportunities, it’s still dominated by big-s Sherpas. (And from what I can read there’s some tension between Sherpas and other Nepali ethnic groups because of this. Low altitude porters get paid very little for supplying the camps/ the trek to Everest base camp, and those jobs are usually held by Tamang and Rai people, who don’t have access to the same mountain economy, and often aren’t allowed to sleep in the tea houses.) (This article again).

Speaking of the base camp trek… unfortunately, there’s a lot of other places in Nepal where serial killers can hide bodies.

So that’s where it’s at. It’s big and complicated and makes me really sad a lot of the time.

More resources:

Sherpa- an incredible documentary about a recent tragedy and it’s repercussions.

Sherpa Conversation and Basic Words- a phrasebook

Buried in the Sky- about K2, but incredible read and a lot of information, both about death in the Himalayas and the lives of people who work in them.

Just for fun:

I have… complicated feelings about people traveling to Everest to climb it. It’s framed as heroic a lot of the time, and I own that it’s difficult, but… well.

That said, Half the Sky is a musical about just that, and the soundtrack is beautiful and currently costs $0. Think of it as a palate cleanser.

Final thoughts

Thanks for anyone who has read this far. Thank you for your prompt, OP- and sorry again.

Pease don’t climb Everest.

9

ILoveLongDogs t1_izmo2lq wrote

Dude, what. Why go to all that bother, what did OP do to you?

Also, most of what you were saying about moving the bodies and hiding the evidence I think is massively off base to what was intended. I thought the idea of the prompt was "work as a seemingly legitimate guide then bump them off and make it look like an accident".

5

Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmpfg2 wrote

Totally fair, and honestly it did get away from me. If I’d typed this out all at once, I probably wouldn’t have posted it.

The plot you mentioned is (allegedly) something that happened- it’s the main storyline in High Crimes. However, guide and Sherpa are not interchangeable, and honestly that’s the main reason I started posting- When you’re writing about a different culture, it’s worth knowing some cultural context. And this isn’t just sherpa the job, it’s Sherpa the people, and honestly I get really angry about the cost they pay for other people to climb.

That, and I figured people reading the prompts might want to know more about Everest. Nothing against OP, they seem perfectly lovey. I just wanted to add some context, and it spiraled. Sorry to you as well.

5

canofwhoops t1_iznahre wrote

Personally I came in with mild interest for a writing prompt and came out educated on the basics of climbing everest and a new understanding of the dangers as well as the Sherpas.

So thank you! All that effort writing was definitely not wasted it was a good read!

4

astillac t1_izmqbcj wrote

It was an award-winning info dump and I kinda fell in love a little bit. XD

3

Goodmindtothrowitall t1_izmqheg wrote

Aw, thank you! I think the other reason it got out of hand is that I haven’t talked to my usual infodump person for like a year and I think it boiled over. (Calling her soon tho!)

3