Sunday Stills: The Invisible Men of Everest

Read: Living on a Dollar a Day View the email on a web browser. Sunday Stills ISSUE 15 Sunday, April 27, 2014 SPECIAL REPORT Sherpas: The Invisible Men of Everest Taking pride in their moments of glory, Sherpa guides pose for snapshots on the summits of Himalayan giants such as Mount Everest. “A lot of Westerners have an idealized view of the Sherpas. They see them as virtuous, strong, sturdy, undaunted, brave, loyal Buddhists. The Sherpas themselves have striven to live up to the ideals Westerners projected onto them—augmenting the qualities they often did possess but also wanting to be the kind of people they were imagined to be.” —Vincanne Adams Last year, when the attention of the world was focused on a fight between Sherpas and some Western mountaineers, you would hardly have known four Sherpas died on Everest in separate incidents. Last week, after an avalanche killed 16 Nepali mountaineers, 13 of them Sherpas, the passing militancy of the [Brawl] in April 2013 looks like the opening of a new era, hopefully not one that encourages violence but addresses what may have lain underneath it: years of inequality, disrespect, and lack of recognition. “I do feel like some of the pushback is a new face of the Sherpas,” University of California, San Francisco anthropologist and Sherpa scholar Vincanne Adams said last week. “It’s about time.” READ PROOF ‘Where God Stays’ Photograph by SARKER PROTICK Photographer Sarker Protick, a lover of rivers and an admirer of “good old American road trip-style photography,” began wandering the length of the Padma River, starting in the north and traveling from district to district toward his home in Dhaka. But when he arrived in Ishurdi, his plans changed. Something about its landscape haunted him. “In previous places that I had been the land wasn’t that high from the river. Here, it was very high, and at the edge of the river the land ended suddenly. It felt like it wasn’t finished properly. That particular area was almost deserted. It all seemed strange, not quite right.” READ NEWS A Closer Look at a Mission to Mars Photograph by CORBIS Sending astronauts to Mars could be done at a small fraction of the cost of developing and flying the F-35 fighter jet, according to a rough estimate put forward by a panel of NASA, industry, and academic experts. “It’s feasible, it’s affordable, and it can be done without impacting the federal budget or the NASA budget,” said Chris Carberry, executive director of the nonprofit ExploreMars group. “This message is getting across, and there’s more support now in Congress and the public for [sending] humans to Mars than ever before.” READ PROOF Photographer John Stanmeyer Gets Lost in Jerusalem Photograph by John Stanmeyer Photography possesses intervals, moments of timelessness, where the benevolence of the world around us offers fleeting touches of visual poetry upon the commonplace. Yet for unruly reasons, we can become too blind to see or feel their significance. READ NEWS The Walking Deer “For large mammals around North America, especially around the lower 48, we typically think we know what’s going on. And here we have hundreds of animals migrating 150 miles across public and private lands—right underneath our noses—and we didn’t even know about it.” —Hall Sawyer, research biologist Deer are among the most ubiquitous animals in North America, giving humans ample chances to observe their habits. But until recently, scientists had missed one remarkable behavior of a hardy group of mule deer. READ Show Your Support: SHOP DONATE SUBSCRIBE TRAVEL BECOME A MEMBER You are receiving this email because bpi.hgmp.jusgein@blogger.com is signed up to receive National Geographic communications. If you prefer not to receive emails from us, please unsubscribe. To ensure that you receive your National Geographic emails, please add ngs@e.nationalgeographic.com to your address book now. Learn how. Contact Us | Privacy Policy | About Us | Customer Service National Geographic | 1145 17th Street N.W. | Washington, D.C. 20036 Copyright © 2014 National Geographic Society. All Rights Reserved.