The Lukla greeting committee, a combination of would-be porters and the (not pictured) Nepalese military. Very few of these men, if any, are Sherpa- most porters in the Himalaya are of other ethnicities such as the Rai, Tamang, Magar, or Gurung, drawn from even poorer areas of the country without the big-money tourist draw of Everest or Annapurna. Female Sherpa take portering jobs (internal ones rather than directly for the tourists, or so it seemed), but the men mostly stick to the high-prestige, highish-profit mountaineering and guiding. Judging from the attitude of our friends' guide, some (most?) Sherpa look down on these ethnic interlopers a bit, especially those from the lowlands (who tend to be Hindu rather than Buddhist).
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