At the 2024 Kendal Mountain Festival, the jury of the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature announced Headstrap by Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar as this year's winner. The book explores the lives and legends of the Sherpa community of Darjeeling who have long been associated with mountaineering in the Himalaya.
The book was reviewed for the 2024 Alpine Journal by artist and author Heather Dawe who found it to be a deeply empathetic work which goes far beyond the contributions of this community to famous expeditions, to examine their lives and culture in rich detail. You can read Heather's review below.
Headstrap
Legends and Lore from the Climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling
Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar
Mountaineers Books, 2024, 423pp, £23.61
The land mass of the Himalaya is such that its Indigenous peoples are spread across an extensive area of the Asian continent. While the religions and wider cultures of these peoples vary, common threads run through their stories – reverence for the mountains above them, strength born from the hardships of living at altitude in a landscape of extreme geographies and weather patterns, a deep connection with their families, friends and the landscapes around them, to name a few.
Headstrap is a book focussed on the Darjeeling Sherpas, the community of people who, centuries ago, first migrated from Tibet to Nepal and then to the foothills of the Himalaya in northern India, becoming renowned for their skills as expedition porters from the turn of the 20th century. The content of the book is based upon oral histories collected by its authors: Nandini Purandare, economist, Honorary President of the Himalayan Club and editor of The Himalayan Journal and Deepa Balsavar, a writer and illustrator of children’s books and adjunct associate professor at the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay.
These histories were collected during the extensive time the authors spent with the Sherpas in their homes in Toong Soong, the Sherpa village in Darjeeling. Hundreds of hours of interviews were recorded in Nepali, Hindi and English, each of which was then translated and transcribed prior to being distilled into the narratives of Headstrap.
In their introduction Purandare and Balsavar note how they came to recognise that, more than oral histories, they were collecting memories, making the important point that sometimes these memories, whilst believed to be fact by the person(s) retelling them, were not always wholly accurate.
‘It took time to understand that it was memories, personal and intimate, rather than the written accounts, that should be the focus of our work – after all, memories let us into people’s hearts and minds.’
While the authors made every effort for these histories to be based completely in fact (detailed further research into any available archives for example), their observation also reflects the significant gap in the literature Headstrap fits into. Despite the Sherpas’ major role in many of the world’s greatest mountaineering achievements (of which many books have been written), their complete history has previously been reliant on being passed down the generations by word of mouth. Such tales are likely to become changed and perhaps embellished as they begin to pass into legend.
The blurb of the book’s back cover describes Headstrap as a ‘culturally rich and evocative narrative’. This richness in observation and writing was a key takeaway for me; the book tells stories of the Sherpas’ strength, courage and achievements in the mountains but, even more than this, it shines a light on their lives. Their families, support networks, pride in educational achievement and more, all with a backdrop of the mountains above; entities that drive them spiritually as well as offering them physical challenge and the means to make a living.
The stories in Headstrap recount the backgrounds of those Sherpas most famous for their mountaineering achievements. Tenzing Norgay of course, but also Nawang Gombu, Nawang Topgay and many more, including Ani Daku Sherpa, one of the earliest woman porters. While the mountaineering achievements of these Sherpas are both impressive and important to write of, the empathy with which Purandare and Balsavar recount their wider lives – the tenacity the Sherpas showed to achieve, their relationships with friends and family, having to cope with tragedy and the ways they lived - bring the reader to the Sherpas’ lives in new ways.
The Sherpa climbers of the 1953 Mount Everest Expedition - The Royal Geographical Society
The history of mountaineering in the region and its far-reaching influence are explored and discussed as a backdrop to the Sherpa tales – the introduction of the Tiger Badges as a means for Sherpas to prove exceptional high altitude and expedition experience and so justify higher rates of pay, the beginnings of The Himalayan Club and its continuing influence, the 1954 establishment in Darjeeling of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI). The list goes on. As such, the reader is shown important developments in Himalayan mountaineering through the eyes of the people who, behind the scenes, facilitated and played a huge part in many of the first ascents of the 8000ers and other major peaks.
As the children and grandchildren of the first generation Darjeeling Sherpas grew, an increasing number of them moved away to pursue their education as a route to safer, more stable careers. This led to a second wave of Sherpas coming to Darjeeling from Nepal. This more recent history is embodied by Phurba, Purandare and Balsavar’s trekking guide during some of their visits. Phurba and his peers continue to advance their guiding skills in the most progressive ways available to them, learning the basics from the HMI and then more modern techniques from their contacts in Nepal.
The stories of the Sherpas progress through to recent decades and the present day, and it becomes apparent that the client base of supported expeditions is changing, along with the roles of the Sherpas. There are now many more Indian and Chinese mountaineering parties, reflecting the significant economic growth of these two countries and perhaps the waning influence of Western countries on the leadership and outcomes of Himalayan mountaineering. Today Sherpas play a far more active role in the planning, guiding and climbing aspects of commercial expeditions. They are also, of course, making their own expeditions and developing new routes. Headstrap shows us these changes through the modern-day stories of a new generations of Sherpas, including Lhakpa Tsering and Dawa Norbu Sherpa.
Mountains and mountaineering have for a long time inspired literature, and we should not be surprised that the increased autonomy of the Sherpas and their contemporaries in other parts of the Himalaya is also bringing forth new work. Headstrap is one of a number of recently published such books.
It can be argued that Western mountaineering literature has reflected the narrow, rationalist view of mountains as being there to be scaled, conquered in some way. Headstrap is something quite different. While of course it discusses the Darjeeling Sherpas’ mountaineering achievements, it goes broader, telling us of their lives and culture, making for a rich and absorbing read. As Katie Ives writes in the book’s foreword:
‘This collection – along with other books by or about expedition workers – represents far more than a crucial way of filling gaps in the historical record. It is also a call to action for more writers, editors, publishers, and readers to join a larger reckoning and reenvisioning of what mountain literature has been, should have been, and might yet become.’
As mountain literature continues to diversify, books such as Headstrap are more than playing their part, they are showing us the way.
Heather Dawe
This review originally appeared in the 2024 Alpine Journal. The Journal contains reviews of many mountaineering and mountain-related books from the past 12 months, including a number of other Boardman-Tasker nominees. Copies of the 2024 Alpine Journal are available to purchase via Cordee.
