Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya – What’s the Difference Between a Guide and a Great Guide?
Trekking amidst the soaring peaks of the Nepal Himalaya is a dream you may only get to make true once. Getting stuck on the trail for several days with an awkward, uncommunicative or incompetent guide can, at best, be a daily irritation; at worst, a safety risk.
But finding a stellar guide can lift your experience to levels you could never hope for by yourself.
After three weeks in the hills, we befriended many guides and spoke with dozens of trekkers. One outstanding character, who came highly recommended by his clients, gave us the time for an interview so we could find out what you should be looking for. With twenty years’ experience and some hair-raising stories, Bigraj Tamang knows what he’s talking about.
Meet Bigraj
We first bumped into Bigraj in a guesthouse in Swanta, a babbling little farming village at the foot of a valley, where we rested for the night before we would have to hump our gear 1,500 metres up to the Khopra Danda ridgeline. Bigraj was guiding an English couple, who turned out to have a lot in common with us. We all gathered around the guesthouse table and soon became friends.
It wasn’t until the next morning, when Bigraj showed us his business card, that we realised his clients hadn’t been affectionately calling him “Big Raj”, it was actually his name.
As his surname Tamang signals, Bigraj is a member of the Tamang community, one of Nepal’s major ethnic groups. His village is in the Everest region, nestling in the foothills a short way south of the world’s highest peak. Nobody in his family worked in tourism but it was common for his fellow villagers to make the ascent north to Lukla, the gateway to Everest, and seek work as porters for the rich foreign hikers who could be their ticket to a decent wage.
At 14, Bigraj followed a neighbour up to Lukla and found someone to take him on as a porter. He saw then that there were various roles in a trekking support team and each had its place in a hierarchy. The guides were pretty high up, with the leading guides at the top. His ambition was fuelled to one day qualify as an assistant. But once he achieved that, he saw the way to becoming a guide, and now has his own trekking business.
When Bigraj left home, he had no clue about the job and didn’t speak a word of English. He had to learn all that the hard way: by doing it.
What Makes a Great Guide?
Bigraj told us that a characteristic you should seek, which could have a big impact on your experience, is cultural sensitivity.
There is a growing population of people offering trek guidance from the cities (Kathmandu and Pokhara are the big hubs) who are highly educated, have great communication skills and know how to package and sell a trip, but don’t know where to throw the trash when they visit a mountain village.
A good guide knows the cultures of the areas you will visit. They are tuned into what’s appropriate to say and do, and what to avoid. Then they can open doors for you, to get under the skin of the native mountain communities and help you feel more welcome, less intrusive, more like a local.
Another important capability is field experience. Some of the slickest trekking companies haven’t had their feet in the alpine soil as much as you would hope. Bigraj explained that an important element, which can only be developed from years of fieldwork, is that you get a feel for what’s important for the client. It’s one thing to know the way to the next town but quite another to have learned through trial and error how to make your differing Western clients happy in the diverse, unpredictable environment on the roof of the world.
If you want to get a sense of a company’s cultural sensitivity, you only need to ask them about what it’s really like in the places you plan to visit. With the right knowledge, they will be able to paint you a picture of life on the slopes that is both vivid and candid.
Learning the Hard Way
Bigraj took the traditional route up the ladder to becoming a guide. It would be more than most of us soft-boned foreigners could ever manage. If you’ve walked in the Himalayas before, you know what I’m talking about: these guys are superhuman. As my wife and I puffed our way up the hillside, proud of the respective 10 and 18 kg we were carrying, every few minutes we were overtaken by porters in flip-flops, belting out songs between puffs of their cigarettes, with nothing but a length of old sack strung across their foreheads to brace against more than double my load. They do this day in, day out, in all weather, often at altitudes that would make a sea-level kid like me faint.
After Bigraj started out at 14, the trails were much more basic than they are now. There were few teahouses so the team had to carry tents, cookware and sleeping bags. He often hauled over 40 kg. He said the worst days were after the snow, because the tent would get wet and therefore even heavier. Of course, it was well below freezing on those days, too.
Over the following two decades, through countless interactions with different clients and circumstances, he broadened his knowledge of the trade. Bigraj told us, for instance, how he was guiding a six-person group from Greece, when two of them developed altitude sickness. One of the two accepted Bigraj’s suggestion of a helicopter evacuation, while the other wanted to avoid the expense and walk down to a safer elevation. Leaning on his knowledge of the mountains, Bigraj had to convince the guest to take the financial loss and get to the chopper, no matter how strong he felt.
Confidence is Key
Out of all this hard-earned experience emerges a virtue that Bigraj attributes to the best guides: they are calm, confident people, especially when things start to turn sour. And they know how to help their clients stay in an easy state of mind too, which makes all the difference.
I asked Bigraj’s opinion on something that had been floating around my mind on the mountain trails over the previous few weeks. Does confidence – and its opposite, anxiety – have an impact on health at altitude? He confirmed that it did. Not just for newbie foreigners who are taking their first taste of rarified air, it’s true even for the lifers who were raised in the hills.
“My first time anywhere I get nervous,” he told me. “I can then get sick automatically. But when we’re mentally prepared and confident, we don’t get problems.”
Medical advice sources say that altitude sickness can affect anyone, no matter their experience or fitness level. So it seems that a peaceful, positive mindset goes a long way for anyone climbing into the riskier elevations (above about 2,500 m). I suspect it helped me. I never got sick.
When we first met Bigraj, huddled by the stove in a rickety wooden lodge halfway up a mountain, he told us a story that highlights the value of a prepared mind.
Stranded in the Sky
Imagine you have just achieved an ascent to almost 7,000 m and you’re now traipsing back down through the snow. You haven’t eaten or drunk for several hours. The unseasonable daytime warmth is making the snow dangerously soft. Oh, and you have a spinal cord injury that affects much of your body, including one leg that doesn’t work anything like it used to.
Then your lead guide falls into a crevasse. You and your team get him out in one piece but it’s time to make the call: time for a helicopter evacuation.
Then the rescue team tells you it’s too late in the day to fly, you will have to wait through the night on the mountain…
You can enjoy the story of that night here on CNN: How a quadriplegic former rugby player conquered a Himalayan mountain
When Bigraj told us his version of that night, he showed us a photo on his mobile. In the photo were three people in heavy-duty down jackets, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the snow. He told us that they had to coil their ropes on the snow to make seats for themselves, then just sat out the night. It was -25ºC.
“The others were very nervous,” he told us. “But I kept moving. I knew we would get them down from the mountain. If the helicopter couldn’t come, we still had a satellite phone. I could go down to Camp 2 and bring shelter and food back up. There is never just one option.”
When I asked him what it’s like in the middle of the night, in lethally cold air, just sitting there, staring out into the sky at the top of the world, he looked wistful for a few moments. “It was nice and clear that night”. There’s that mindset again.
The next morning, the chopper evacuated the team, all of whom were in reasonable shape. It was the first time Bigraj had needed to call for a helicopter for himself. From the way he described it, I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or enjoyed the ride.
Looking to the Himalayan Future
I asked Bigraj to describe his sense of the evolution of the trekking scene. He told us that when mountaineering first started many people died but now it is a rarity. There are still incidental disasters, such as avalanches, but the trekking community as a whole now tends to be more experienced and equipped.
Guides now have to train before they are allowed to take clients on the mountains. Skill levels are far higher than in the past. Specialists have emerged, such as those who monitor the weather, and decent guides rely on them every day to predict the conditions. That way, they can adjust the trek plan daily to minimise danger and optimise the experience for their clients.
In light of this maturation of the industry, he said, “Those who want adventures, these days they’re safe. But natural disasters happen. That’s luck. It could happen anywhere. Better to choose really good, highly skilled people.”
Better to choose someone with the scars to back their confidence on the mountain, I guess. Someone like Bigraj.
