Come rain or shine, 43-year-old Pasang Kazi Sherpa religiously makes a daily trip at 5:30 am sharp to the domestic airport. His only motive is to deliver medicines to Lukla which is deprived of transportation facility and has one of the most dangerous airports in the world. As an executive director of Pasang Lhamu & Nicole Niquille Hospital, he has been handling the sole responsibility of running the only full fledged hospital based in Lukla.
A man of few words, social worker Sherpa believes in walking the talk. Since 1993, he started working as a guide, just one year before Pasang Lhamu Sherpa passed away. The first Nepali woman to climb the summit of Mount Everest was his aunt who inspired him in so many ways. After she met her fatal accident in the snow, he took over the responsibility of working as store-in-charge and a guide in her office, Thamserku Trekking, which is still running.[break]
As much as he was fond of spending time outdoors, Sherpa had a passion for photography since early days. “Since many foreign photographers were exhibiting pictures of Nepal abroad, I thought of doing the same and promote our pictures at international levels,” he says.
In 2003, Sherpa went to Switzerland to have his photo exhibition after he got invited by Pasang Lhamu Sherpa’s brother who was working as a chef for Nicole Niquille’s restaurant, the donor of the Lukla Hospital. Niquille is Switzerland’s first lady mountain guide who is 13th in the worlds’ list of lady guides. She has made more than fifteen trips to Nepal and was keen on building a hospital in Nepal with her insurance money, and she trusted Sherpa with it.
“Since Pasang Lhamu Sherpa’s dream was to help her local people, we discussed on building a health post in Lukla which has now turned into a full fledged hospital,” says Sherpa. The hospital is free of cost and it was only since October that people have to pay for the medicines. “When the medicines were free it was mostly misused as many used to take it and discard it. So the basic charge is Rs 50 and the medicines are of the same price as here and everything is free for children up to age five,” he explains.
Sherpa has a deep connection with his hometown which is why, though he has traveled to many places, it is in his village that he wants to make as much impact as possible.
When leprosy was widespread in the villages of Solukhumbu and many of his siblings passed away due to various diseases, his family decided to move to Sikkim where Sherpa was born. But after a few years, they relocated back to Solukhumbu where his childhood was spent with his three siblings.
Having grown up in a village, he was deprived of basic facilities. But his parents didn’t compromise on his education, so he got admitted at a school which was built by Edmund Hillary. Since his father was working as a trek guide, he came to Kathmandu in 1976 where he continued his education.
“The room that my father rented was for just Rs 10 since times were different back then. But being in the capital, I was finding everything so amusing,” remembers Sherpa.
When he was just twelve years old, Sherpa accompanied his father as a guide’s helper and got the opportunity to explore different places. He finished his schooling from Darjeeling but since his childhood, he got to experience the wilderness as he even trekked to places like Tibet, Kashmir and Ladakh in India.
“Compared to today, there were very less facilities during trekking as proper trails hadn’t been formed. Besides that, there were problems of robbery and since there were hardly any hotels, we would have to sleep in tents the whole time,” he says.
He shares an incident when he got lost for a night while trekking in Jaljale, Lamjung, and was left all alone. He was with the porters when he somehow lost the track as he was mistaken that his group was right ahead of him. He had no options but to stay the night in the village.
"I didn’t have money but I had my torch and batteries, so the family from the village allowed me to stay and gave me food for giving the battery in return which they considered was worthy enough during that time," he shares.
While he was juggling his work as a guide, he learnt French and became a francophone guide as well.
“While working as a normal guide, we would get Rs 200/300 per day, and a French-speaking guide would get as much as US$80 a day,” he explains. After working for 30 years as a guide, he opened his own travel agency called Vertical Adventures some five years back.
One of the upsides of going trekking was that he would be close to nature and would get the opportunity to capture the beauty of it. But he didn’t have the luxury to own a camera until much later though he longed to have one. He once received a camera as a gift from a German photographer who was his father’s friend with whom he went on trekking. But to his disappointment, his father sold that camera as he was in need of money. It was only later when he worked as a French guide that he could save some money and buy a camera.
He started off with landscape photography exhibitions abroad. But foreigners were more interested in knowing about people and culture and subjects portraying daily lives. He then started doing photography of kids, people and life in rural areas. He received the UNESCO Excellence Award 1998 in Japan when he won the photo competition with his theme of nature and daily life.
Besides photography, his social contribution has also earned him accolades. Due to his commitment at the hospital and the tourism sector, he recently became the recipient of Media International Award 2013, especially for the social unity and economic revolution through tourism and social development. He had also received the Honors of National Peace 2004, Nepal, by Peace Development Campaign.
Apart from his trekking, photography and social work, Sherpa also did journalism training and worked as a journalist during 1998 for Yug Sambad, a weekly paper where he basically wrote pieces on tourism. He frequently contributed articles on tourism to other papers as well.
But Sherpa devotes most of his time to the hospital which is why it has been running fairly well. Besides Nepalis, even foreign trekkers have been benefiting from the hospital. Those who can’t afford are provided with food, checkups and flight tickets to Kathmandu if their medical condition is worse. So far, the Pasang Lhamu & Nicole Niquille Hospital in collaboration with the Pasang Lhamu Mountaineering Foundation treats over 900 patients on average every month.
“One of the problems is finding doctors as many are unwilling to work in Lukla. We have two doctors and one foreign volunteer who stay for three months,” he explains. From delivering medicines to following up with the patients’ health conditions, Sherpa has been handling all the responsibilities.
“Due to transportation problems, everything is expensive in Lukla. One kg of salt costs Rs 180 and many times it becomes difficult if there are fewer flights,” says Sherpa and adds, “Small health posts have been running in villages just for the sake of it as there are no facilities and many people come with diseases which could have been cured in inexpensive ways if they were checked in time.”
Since the Lukla hospital provides only minor surgery facilities , Sherpa is planning to bring more improved surgery facilities so that patients won’t have to come all the way to Kathmandu. Though he has many responsibilities on his shoulders, he wants to devote all his time to the hospital.
“There are so many people who are suffering and deprived of facilities out there and so much is yet to be done,” he concludes.
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