As small boys, we were very shy about meeting tourists crossing though our valley, expedition sardar Ngawang Yonden Sherpa recalls. But at their heels, we enjoyed walking in the footprints that their heavy mountain boots left in the muddy ground, just to experience under our bare feet the feeling of the profiles of their rubber soles and imagine walking in their sophisticated mountain shoes.
That was in the 1960s. The Sherpas of Rolwaling Valley in Eastern Nepal still lived from breeding yaks and cultivating potatoes. They followed a seasonal cycle of transhumance from the winter settlement at 3200 meters to the high pastures above 5000 metres.
Today agro-pastoral livelihoods have given way to a highly successful engagement in the globalised mountaineering tourism of the Himalayas, organised from an urban base. This book attempts to trace this transformation. Life stories, extended into reflections, allow the reader insights into the perceptions and feelings of the Rolwaling Sherpas regarding this profound change.
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