A primal desire that we each keep secretly hidden is to wander into the wild, to cast off social graces like a savage, and to let our beard and hair grow out to a haggard mane. Several weeks on the Himalayan trails gives plenty of time to go beyond stubbly and scruffy to bushy and barbarian. For a lot of slaves to office culture it’s a treat to play out dreams of being a free spirit and a “manly man” out of public scrutiny. Of course there are already hermit mountain man fantasy camps available closer to home, but breaking into the hiking lifestyle in the Khumbu with some untamed whiskers garners great credibility. Famous summit baggers are always photographed with prominent, unkempt beards, so it’s probably a hit to your image if you take pictures home where you’re cleanly shorn.

One of the joys for our trekking group was meeting all of the children along the trails. In each village there would be a small group of them together watching the hikers pass by. Sometimes they would give us a “namaste”, but usually they were very shy and would just keep to themselves. Seeing children sitting outside in the sunlight is actually a rare sight for us because kids here are either at school, in the living room watching television, or at the computer. An American youngster couldn’t stand to loiter outside for no purpose over an extended period of time. The younger members of our group (well, not to be a hypocrite, I include myself in this) went out of their minds with all of the long stretches without diversions. It’s not that the Sherpa children had made a lifestyle choice, there probably just wasn’t anything useful for them to do. They were enjoying their temporary relief from the kind of hard work their parents were doing. On occasion we saw children who were not much older (starting about 10 years old) who were hauling loads and starting their lifetime of hard work.