Rozprawy i szkice
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4601-913X
An exceptional class of mountain people has emerged in recent years among the indigenous inhabitants of the highland regions of Asia. Since the 17th century, the local mountain dwellers were hired by Westerners to serve on exploratory expeditions as porters and pack animal drivers. The best among them worked as high-altitude porters in climbing expeditions to the highest peaks of Himalaya and Karakoram, where they gained mountaineering experience and technical skills. As residents of high-altitude settlements experienced in pastoral and hunting activities in the surrounding mountains, they had a natural physical advantage over Westerners. However, for many years, they only served as low-paid labourers. Their subservient mentality inherited from colonial times and a lack of confidencein their own abilities served as obstacles to social advancement. However, they managed to overcome this! Currently, local mountain dwellers have taken complete control of high-altitude tourism.
When I returned to the Asian mountains after thirty years, I was delighted to observe these changes. The process varies in different regions I visited—Nepal, the Indian Himalaya, the western Pakistani Karakoram, and Xinjiang—but the trend is the same everywhere. Local agencies, led by local leaders, are responsible now for organizing treks and mountaineering expeditions to the highest peaks, rather than Western companies. Their clients are not only foreigners but also the country’s residents—Nepalese and Indians in the Himalaya and Pakistanis in the Karakoram. Only in Xinjiang are the Chinese not visible. The small agencies, employing a few local guides, compete with each other and cooperate at the same time by hiring porters and carriers, creating a local mountain people’s community. The crème de la crème of this community consists of high-altitude guides who have become independent climbers increasingly active in their own and foreign mountains. They organize exploratory and sports expeditions funded by foreign clients or sponsoring companies. This process went unnoticed by self-confident Western Himalayan climbers. Sport expeditions described their successes without mentioning the involvement of high-altitude porters, and commercial expedition clients boasted about their ascents to eight-thousanders, not even mentioning the names of the Sherpas who guided them there. The impressive style of the winter ascent of K2 by a group of ten Nepalis surprised the mountaineering world. It resulted, however, in attempts to downplay their success.
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English
Język Polski
https://doi.org/10.19195/2084-4107.17.8
