Crew forms backbone of trek
Porters haul 30 kilos of gear up and down the slopes while kitchen staff produce meals
HIMALAYAS, NEPAL—“Why not, coconut peanut?” asks World Expeditions guide Birkha Magar, cackling and tapping my arm like I should get the joke. A trekker is photographing terraced crops and we’ve just visited the world’s deepest gorge, the 5,571metre Kali Gandaki.
Magar doesn’t understand the attraction to agriculture after the gorge but, he jests, if you want to eat coconut and peanut as a meal, go ahead, live and let live. If only everyone shared his attitude.
Magar manages the porters who ascend steep, stony slopes while carrying 30 kilograms of our bags and equipment strapped to their heads. Flat in Canada means horizontal, like a King St. sidewalk. Nepalese “flat” is scaling every King St. building.
World Expeditions provides the crew with new shoes, clothes and sleeping bags. On the trek, they are given three meals a day, limited to carrying 30 kilograms and paid union rates regulated by the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal and labour union of Nepal.
When I ask porters Dipak Thaba, Amrit Rai and Rajkumar Shrastha why they do it, the answers are unanimous — money and mountains.
The youngest porter, Bibbin Shrestha, is 19. He’s a good dancer, delicately contorting arms to the beat of Magar’s drums on our last day.
Porters need infectious energy, and plenty of rice, to keep going. Magar says their job is easy. It’s the kitchen staff who really work, producing plentiful food from dawn to dusk.
I watch a woman in a red jacket scythe fields of flourishing millet, with a basket strapped to her head. Annapurna South mountain looms in the background.
“Be careful. Lots of nettles. Very dangerous,” Magar warns me.
I crouch to photograph her. “Day-veed!” he cries. Twisting quickly, I panic. He just wants a picture of me taking a picture.
It’s payback for photographing him often.
He’s got the poses, catchphrases and charisma of a WWE performer. Watching him when he’s not hosting guests, a life trekking seems like it could be as lonely as Mickey Rourke’s character in The Wrestler.
Magar asks to make sure I email him. The address is undeliverable. I hope he’s got another group to entertain.