My eleven o’clock consultation on Friday was with Dr. Dhoti Bandarkochaak Ladochus Janthabhalu Machikne, Special Delegate Designate for Tourism at the Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Once in my office, he perched on the couch in front of the picture window overlooking the White House and took a sip of the masala chia Gretchen had provided at my instruction.
“After recent events,” he opened, “we had hoped that the spring 2016 mountaineering season would have had a less tragic beginning.”
“The last couple of years have been pretty rough,” I concurred. “The Khumbu Icefall disaster in 2014 killed sixteen Sherpas, then an avalanche tore through base camp during the earthquake of April 25, 2015 and caused twenty-two more deaths.”
“And before that,” he sighed, “there was the Sherpa labor unrest of 2013.”
“Where a group European mountain guides who should have known better treated them like servants,” I noted, “and completely disrespected them while they were trying to fix ropes on the Lhotse Face.”
“They threatened the Sherpas with their ice axes,” he shuddered. “Completely unacceptable. Sherpas are not second-class citizens. No wonder there was a brawl afterwards at Camp II.”
“Things have definitely been difficult for the Everest trade these last three years,” I agreed. “And now, I hear that a lot of the outfitters are sitting out the season.”
“Considering how things have been going,” he shrugged, “they could very well be the smart ones. But tourism makes up ten percent of our entire economy, and I’m sure you realize that Everest expeditions are a very significant part of that.”
“The typical climber spends between thirty and eighty thousand dollars for an attempt at Everest,” I observed.
“Vendors can get one hundred and fifty dollars a day to rent out a yak,” Machikne recited, “base camp porters receive seventy-five dollars a day, the tea houses charge a hundred dollars a day for lodging, a team of cooks and assistants can run six thousand dollars for a six week engagement, and personal Sherpas often make five thousand dollars per expedition.”
“Then there are the Nepalese government fees and permits,” I added.
“Absolutely,” he confirmed. “Climbing permit, eleven thousand dollars per climber, local Sherpa guide, four thousand dollars, icefall maintenance, eight hundred dollars, weather forecast fee, five hundred dollars, fixed ropes fee, one hundred and fifty dollars, medical support fee, one hundred dollars, garbage and human waste fee, five thousand dollars, puja contribution to the gods three hundred to one thousand dollars, depending on how strong a good luck spell the climber wants.”
“Puja contribution to the gods?”’ I inquired.
“It’s not mandatory,” he explained, “but a damned good idea, in my opinion. Then there’s the Nepalese government liaison officer retainer and permit organization fee, two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars per team. That is mandatory.”
“It all adds up,” I replied, “no doubt about it.”
“Or doesn’t,” he ruefully murmured. “And Nepal needs that revenue, believe me.”
“What happened to the four billion dollars Nepal got from the international community after the 2015 earthquake?” I pressed.
“Good question,” he answered with a slow shake of his head. “Let’s just say that Americans who think their government here in Washington never gets anything done should be grateful they aren’t burdened with one like that which we Nepalese have in Kathmandu. Please don’t tell the ambassador I said that.”
“Of course not,” I assured him. “I always strive to provide each of my clients with the same level of confidentiality. I’ll not breath a word of it to the ambassador, although a little bird told me that he does, in fact, share your assessment of Nepalese government efficiency. According to reliable sources, the whole thing is a political zombie, and so ineffective that your Prime Minister, who was out of the country at the time learned about the earthquake through a tweet sent by the Prime Minister of India.”
“Sad,” Machikne confirmed, “but true. It is very ironic that Nepal’s most famous and reliable economic engine consists of parading foreigners up and down the world’s highest pile of rocks. You know, Tom, sometimes I wonder what possesses people to want to climb Sagarmāthā. We Nepalese lived in its shadow for thousands of years, but none of us ever wanted to go up there.”
“Oh, come now,” I chided, “human nature being what it is, I’m sure some of you must have.”
“Well, yes,” he allowed, “but since nobody who set off to go up there ever came back, we generally concluded that the gods kept important secrets on top of that mountain; secrets that we should never be allowed to know. Westerners had other ideas, of course.”
“Sure,” I affirmed. “Back in the nineteenth century, and going forward up until about 1950, doing something dangerous in a faraway land which involved planting the Union Jack somewhere apparently important was the key to fame, fortune and a knighthood for any intrepid white male member of the British Empire who was daft enough to try it. And it certainly worked for Edmund Percival Hillary, a needy little runt from an ordinary family in New Zealand. He, at least, was a very experienced mountaineer and his expedition didn’t try to do it on the cheap, either – over 400 people, most of them Nepalese, were involved in getting the British adventurer to what the newspapers of the time decided to call ‘the top of the world.’ After that, according to a tradition of explorer worship which had elevated numerous other British nonentities from obscurity before him, a run-of-the-mill Kiwi nobody was propelled into British high society, awarded the Order of the Garter, the Order of New Zealand, the Order of the British Empire, and, of course, a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II Herself.”
“So, as you see it,” my client surmised, “Sir Edmund Hillary’s summit of Mt. Everest was merely another demonstration of British imperialism and supposed cultural, moral and technological superiority, one in a long line of such acts intended to glorify white Protestant British monarchy and justify its rapacious and amoral mercantilism.”
“Exactly,” I vouched.
“But that can’t be the reason why Americans and Europeans, and… lately, I must admit, even certain Asians, climb mountains,” he objected.
“Not at all,” I told him. “Mountain climbing, in general, is a sport, which like sky diving, involves quite a bit of personal peril and is obsessively pursued by individuals with biochemical imbalances that lead them to seek high levels of adrenaline in order to feel normal. That’s the reason why certain people climb mountains while the rest of us don’t. But that is not, by any means, the reason most people seek to climb Mt. Everest.”
“Oh, really?” his eyebrows rose, twin arches of skepticism. “What is it, then?”
“It is,” I revealed, “a personalized version of what motivated Edmund Hillary. You see, during the nineteenth century and actually, most of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth as well, and right up through the end of World War II in the twentieth for that matter, the major European nations and, after it came into being, the United States of America as well, behaved, on the international stage, pretty much like a bunch of egotistical [expletive]-holes.”
“Egotistical [expletive]-holes?” he repeated in a tone dripping with shock.
“That’s right,” I declared, “you heard me correctly. When they weren’t behaving like demented schoolyard bullies, the Great Powers expended their resources on inflating their egos and justifying their excesses and narcissism to each other and the rest of the world. Claiming far-flung islands for themselves, finding the sources of the Nile and other great rivers, discovering unknown primitive tribes in the Upper Amazon and Congo basins over whom their manifest superiority could be readily displayed, planting their flags at the North and South Poles, and, of course, lauding the brave souls among them who climbed the highest peaks – from there to gaze in triumph over all they surveyed – those and many other similar endeavors were the self-affirming feats to which the egotistical [expletive]-hole empires of the Hapsburgs, the Hanoverians, the Romanovs, the French, the Belgians, the Spanish and the Portuguese aspired. And today, people who have that same, insecure warped craving for attention and approval, that same pathetic need to justify their mendacity and lack of empathy, to outshine the rotten things they have done with the blinding light of stupendous achievement – those are the egotistical [expletive]-holes who want to climb Mt. Everest. They want to brag about it in their health club locker room and over drinks their bar, making others feel small and worthless by comparison. They want to put it on their resumes and CV’s to impress idiots who might hire them, imbeciles who have the the authority to promote them, morons who would loan them money, or cretins who could enter into business deals with them. They want to bring it up casually to gain advantage in arguments where it has no relevance, and use it to seduce their colleagues’ spouses. It is their asinine banner of victory, their battle pennant, their valiant standard, to be taken out and waved around in front of the stupid, the ignorant and the gullible whenever the venal and selfish desire to impress and influence beckons.”
“In that case,” Machikne asked, “what do you suggest?”
“Limit the experience,” I recommended. “Right now, you’re doing exactly the opposite – allowing local Nepalese guide businesses to operate using lower cost labor, thereby charging lower fees. That’s precisely the wrong psychology for your demographic. You’re turning Mt. Everest into some kind of theme park for narcissists with adrenaline deficit disorder, as if it were just a scaled-up version of Mt. McKinley or something. But it’s not. Mt. Everest is the highest mountain on earth! You need to go completely upscale on that. Embrace the concept in its entirety and sell the experience of climbing Mt. Everest to the richest egotistical [expletive]-holes the world has to offer!”
“You mean,” he guessed, “that we should, say… double the climbing fees?”
“Triple them!” I exhorted. “Quadruple them! Increase everything by four hundred percent! Hell, five hundred! Six!”
“But.. but… but,” he stuttered, “what about the Chinese? The North Face is in Tibet. What’s to keep the Chinese from underselling Nepal?”
“You,” I reminded him, “have the side of Mt. Everest that Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to every climb Mt. Everest, used to do it. You have primacy. You have the romance and the adventure. Also, you have the Sherpas. Cut off the Sherpas and what will the Chinese do – send the tour guides who couldn’t memorize the Great Wall of China material well enough to pass the competency exam to help cheapskate egotistical [expletive]-holes kill themselves at twenty-nine thousand feet above sea level? I mean really, come on, Chinese mountain climbers? The only time you’ll see Chinese climbing mountains is for a very, very good reason, like collecting bird nests to sell for three hundred dollars an ounce or getting to school because there aren’t any roads available. They do it because they have to, not because they want to. And believe me, nobody who isn’t an egotistical [expletive]-hole or getting paid way more than the average member of his society is going to want to climb Mt. Everest. So, it follows logically that the Chinese will follow your example economically.”
“Won’t raising the cost for basic permission to climb and the associated fees for services and infrastructure drive away the European and American outfitting and guide businesses?” he implored.
“Probably,” I acknowledged, “most of them. So what? Why don’t you Nepalese nationalize Mt. Everest and all the associated businesses, charge premium prices, and hire your own nationals to do the work? This is the twenty-first century, after all. What do you need a bunch of egotistical [expletive]-hole British, Germans, Swiss, Italians, Austrians, French, Russians and Americans running the Mt. Everest guide and outfitting rackets for? You could be doing it yourselves and keeping all the profits! Jack it up, dude! Arrange things so it costs two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to climb Mt. Everest and collude with the Chinese to keep it there. Look what rich, egotistical [expletive]-holes with self-esteem problems already pay to shoot a rhinoceros, a lion or an elephant. Make them pay that kind of money to have Mt. Everest to brag about, too.”
“So we make sure that only the… how do you say it… the ‘one percent’ can afford to climb Mt. Everest?” Machikne concluded.
“Right,” I told him. “By doing so, you and the Chinese will both have hugely higher revenues and vastly reduced costs. And, of course, there will also be one additional upside benefit.”
“What’s that?” he wondered.
“When the media reports that some filthy rich egotistical [expletive]-hole froze to death two hundred feet from the summit of Mt. Everest,” I assured him, “very few people will do anything other than laugh.”