The Sherpa's burden: a question of Everest ethics

Before the likes of Edmund Hillary, the Sherpa people of the Himalayas were as anonymous as any other hilltribe. But when the world’s highest peak was discovered and Everest fever spread throughout the world, the lives of the Sherpa people changed forever. The Sherpas are a Tibetan ethnic group, who migrated and settled in the Khumbu region – the lower slopes and foothills of the Himalayas near Mount Everest – in what is now part of the country of Nepal.