大象传媒

Vanity Publishing

• Graham
• 13 May 07, 09:22 AM

Dave Rasmussen-the-cameraman and I went down to the valley to build up our strength for the summit attempt by eating Yak steaks for a week. We stayed in Sonam’s Friendship Lodge in Dingboche, and it was indeed friendly. We got to know all the family and were even allowed to take their Lhasa terrier out for walks.

Sonam himself is a fascinating man: he remembers the day big bearded Western men came through his home village of Namche Bazaar. He was eight years old and hid in a bush to watch these strange beings. This was the British expedition of 1953, the one on which Hillary and Tenzing first climbed Everest, and the event which changed the Sherpas’ world for ever.

The floodgates of tourism opened and the Khumbu valley is now filled with lodges (guest houses) and shops as a result. Don’t get the idea of luxury, though: Sonam’s lavatory wore a virulent green fleecy fabric on its seat, a fabric which also featured suspicious brown stains. Anyone with any sense hovered a few inches above while performing. And the cooking, while filling, is done in a kitchen that looks like a medieval forge.

These lodges have large communal rooms where trekkers and climbers eye each other with suspicion at first. If you get talking, though, you’ll find a cosmopolitan bunch of walkers who usually have good stories to tell. And on the walls you’ll find something which I’ve never seen elsewhere: the vanity posters.

These posters are quite simply boasts from the climbers who pass through. They don’t appear to advertise anything except the egos of those who have commissioned them back in their hometowns. For example: the Canadian climber who lists his accomplishments as: “International Adventurer. Tour Guide. Speaker. Filmmaker. Writer. Humanitarian.” We all liked that last one. No surprise he is now a politician.

Then there’s the funny ones: an 81 year-old Japanese man whose photograph features him swimming in an ice-encrusted glacier pool- two years running! Then the mysteries: a photograph of a Russian nuclear submarine. Presumably the crew all came climbing for a spot of fresh air.