Sherry Ortner discusses just about all the generalizations and subjects about mountaineering we have talked about in class. Throughout the book you can tell she is being extremely cautious but honest with her arguments. Doing so she does a great job of examining and making clear the root of how Sherpas are portrayed. I like how she examined the relationship between sahibs and Sherpas during the different eras of mountaineering because each brought a new culture to the Himalayas. It seems like Sherpa culture developed in response to mountaineering culture, helping Sherpa people financially but changing or making their religion more flexible and not as strict as traditional practice and beliefs. She writes right in the beginning that the book is about “the long-term encounter between two sets of people – one with more money and power than the other – coming together from different histories and for different reasons to accomplish a single task” (17). Of course all the history texts and literature are going to come from the more wealthy set of people, like all history texts. With this comes patterns of stereotypes which Ortner ignores.

I guess a question that came up for me is, besides the physical support, if the differences in attitude (because there clearly was) between sahibs and Sherpas towards climbing a mountain was the balance each other needed to reach the summit as a team. It seems like Ortner is pretty optimistic in how the stereotypes, image, and use of Sherpas are starting to become more true than during the 1930’s for example. Even reading through all the quotes of mountaineers/authors Ortner used to support her arguments, there is clearly a tone of more respect of Sherpas during more recent expeditions. The relationship between Tenzing Norgay and Edmond Hillary, and Herzog and his Sherpas seem to be the beginning of treating Sherpas a teammates rather than just another piece of gear.

Ortner feels pretty strong on her argument that the primary reason Sherpas went into mountaineering was for the money, and she has clear evidence supporting that. Tenzing Norgay seemed to be the only exception in her book. It makes sense that expeditions would prefer to hire Sherpas than non-Sherpa climbers because of their long history of their work. I wonder though if the desire to make money is seen as an exception in their religion, because it has created monasteries and schools. It is interesting how their work has shaped them and their culture, but in many ways it was sparked by upper-middle class mountaineers.

She ends her book writing that the “strongest kind of anthropology today, in my view, is the kind that attempts to keep walking the tightrope between the two perspectives” (293). The example she gives in the last paragraph shows how most of the media about Sherpas, or just eastern religions in general, are predominently from sahibs attempting to portray (inaccurately) a history of a totally different culture. I found Chapter 3 to be the most supportive to her argument. Sherpas shaped their own culture and made their work more rewarding by not only making money but in a very unintentional way (or maybe it is intentional, I don’t know) showing westerners how to respect the mountains and their home. I would hope that tourist coming to climb in the Himalayas feel a little intrusive and vulnerable towards the mountains and Sherpa culture.