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Following the trail of Darjeeling Sherpas
Summary
Over the course of 12 years, Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar have documented the struggles and challenges of Sherpas
Back in the day, when Nandini Purandare was in her 20s, her heroes included British mountaineers Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker. She followed their climbs and devoured literature by them, routinely exchanging notes with her now husband, Dinesh, on their many dates.
“Their adventures were my idea of cinematic grandeur and everything that was glamorous when I was young," says Purandare, now 64.
Boardman and Tasker took on daring climbs up mountains in Asia and Europe, before they met an untimely death on Mount Everest in 1982. They were in their early 30s and left an indelible mark on world mountaineering. To honour their memory, the Kendal Mountain Festival—held annually in November in Cumbria, UK—has, since 1984, handed out the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. Last year, Purandare and her close friend, Deepa Balsavar, 65, became the first Indians to win it for their co-authored book, The Sherpa Trail.
“I’ve probably read most of the previously awarded books, so to be part of that list feels incredible. And then there’s the connection with Boardman and Tasker which makes this so very precious," says Purandare. Their work had earlier won the best “Climbing Literature" prize at the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival in Banff, Cananda. It was a culmination of a decade-long effort that started when Purandare heard of the legendary climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling from renowned explorer Harish Kapadia. “Western literature usually painted stereotypical images of Sherpas, who were strong, hearty and always smiling. But there were hardly any specifics. Harish had many campfire stories about characters we had never read about before and whose stories were worth exploring," elaborates Purandare.
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The community of Sherpas migrated to India from the Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal in search of employment. When British expeditions made Darjeeling their base in the early 1900s before setting off for the Himalaya, these men proved to be worthy companions at altitude. Tenzing Norgay became the face of the community after climbing Everest in 1953 alongside Edmund Hillary, the first men to do so. But Purandare and Balsavar wanted to understand the man behind the feat, besides the exploits of others from the community—both on and off the mountain—which had made the by-lanes of Darjeeling its home.
As the editor of the Himalayan Journal, published annually by The Himalayan Club, Purandare was familiar with mountaineering literature; for Balsavar, who has written and illustrated children’s books, it was an entirely new domain. Their first visit to the hill town in 2012 coincided with the death anniversary of another dashing climber, Nawang Gombu, the first man to climb Everest twice.
They also met Dorjee Lhatoo, part of the next generation of Darjeeling Sherpas, a treasure chest of knowledge and an important ally for their project. “Dorjee Lhatoo has a remarkable memory and a willingness to share. Once we arrived at Nawang Gombu’s house, we were made to feel at home by the Sherpa community, a lot of folks we went on to become very familiar with," Balsavar recalls.
During the course of the next eight years, until the covid-19 pandemic struck, they made multiple trips to Darjeeling to track down Sherpas and their families, conducting detailed interviews that added up to around 350 hours in all. Their own research involved extensive reading of mountaineering journals and previously published literature, while trying to place Sherpas and connect names with faces. It took time to gain trust of the community and tremendous patience as senior members rolled back the years—and a whole lot of care when they spoke about men who had been lost to the mountains forever.
“When we started out, we were not equipped to ask the right questions. For instance, it took us some time to realise that climbing mountains was simply a job for these men and they were off to work like anyone else during the season. For their wives, there was no emotion attached to their departure, even though they had no means of communicating for three-four months at a time. Then, there were constant internal struggles while revisiting tragedies and the question of whether it was right to put it out there," Purandare explains.
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They compiled stories of heroics, human nature, drunkenness and mischief. They met families whose lives had been shaped by the mountains and future generations of Darjeeling Sherpas who continue to make a living through the uncertainties of climbing.
They made discoveries that unravelled crucial details from those golden years when explorers and climbers from around the world descended on Darjeeling. “The Sherpas, who excelled were handed Tiger badges by The Himalayan Club, and to our surprise, we realised one of them, Sona Sherpa, was still in Darjeeling. Then we travelled to Sikkim to meet a Sherpani who carried loads up mountains and went to Everest in 1952. And found a coin box full of forgotten treasures, tucked away in the loft of one of the homes. So a lot of things unravelled over time," Balsavar says.
When they presented their work to the community in June last year, they saw pride in their eyes and excited chatter on seeing old photos in the book. Since a lot of them were unfamiliar with English, the next part of the project is to create an audiobook in Hindi to make their own stories accessible to them. The importance of their documentation sank in when they realised that 14 of the people they had interviewed had died over the years.
“When I started out, I had very little idea about the Sherpas and their community. It seemed like a bit of an adventure, something to do with a friend. We had no idea that it would turn into the odyssey that it became," Balsavar says.
Shail Desai is a Mumbai-based freelance writer.
