Somewhere between Namche Bazaar and Tengboche, on a stone-flagged trail above the clouds, you will pass a mani wall.
It is long perhaps forty metres and constructed from flat stones carved with the same six syllables, repeated thousands of times in patient Tibetan script: Om Mani Padme Hum. The stones are old. Some of them are very old. People have been placing them here, carving them here, walking respectfully to the left of this wall for generations long before the first foreign expedition set foot in the Khumbu, long before the word “trekking” existed, long before Everest had a name in any language but the one spoken by the people who had always lived beneath it.
Who Are the Sherpas
The Sherpas built that wall. Their ancestors built it. And the fact that you are walking past it on your way to Everest Base Camp does not make it a tourist attraction. It makes you a guest in a place that was sacred before you arrived, and will be sacred long after you leave.
Understanding this understanding who the Sherpas actually are, where they came from, what they believe, and what the word itself means is not optional background reading for a Nepal trek. It is the difference between passing through a place and actually being in it.
The Name Itself: What “Sherpa” Actually Means
Start with the word, because the word is where most of the confusion begins.
Sherpa is not a job title. It is not a synonym for “mountain guide.” It is not a word that means “strong” or “altitude-adapted” or “good at carrying things” all of which are meanings that decades of mountaineering literature have accidentally assigned to it.
The word Sherpa derives from the Tibetan words shar (ཤར, “east”) and pa (པ, “people”) meaning, simply, “people of the east.” It is an ethnic designation the name of a specific people, with a specific homeland, a specific language, a specific faith, and a specific history that stretches back centuries before mountaineering existed as a concept.
Not all persons with the surname “Sherpa” hail from the ethnic group Sherpa; other ethnic groups use the surname. But most persons using “Sherpa” as their surname do belong to the ethnic group.
When a Western travel writer refers to “the sherpas” who fixed the ropes on Kanchenjunga last spring lowercase s, generic plural they are using the word the way someone might say “the locals helped.” It flattens an entire people into a function. The actual Sherpas the ethnic group, the community, the culture are something considerably more specific and considerably more interesting than that.
From Eastern Tibet to the Himalayan Valleys: The Migration Story
The Sherpa people were nomadic people who came from the Kham region in Tibet and traveled west to settle in the area of Solu-Khumbu of the Koshi Province of eastern Nepal. They began to leave Tibet sometime about the twelfth to fifteenth century in search of pasturelands. Historians believe a main reason they migrated could have been religious differences with Mahayana Buddhists.
The Sherpas’ ancestors came from Kham, whose people the Kampas were once known in Tibet for being fierce and independent. The Kampas were feared as warriors and sometimes labeled as outlaws. When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, it was the Kampas who escorted him.
These are not a gentle, passive people who wandered accidentally into the Himalayas. They are the descendants of some of the toughest, most independent communities in all of Central Asia people who crossed the highest mountain range on earth and built permanent settlements at altitudes that most of the world’s population could not survive for a week, on terrain that no one else wanted, in a climate that punishes everything that is not adapted to it.
According to oral Sherpa history, four clans migrated from Kham to Solukhumbu: Minyakpa, Thimmi, Lamas Sherwa, and Chawa. These clans evolved into more than 20 groups.
These pioneer Sherpas founded villages in areas such as Namche Bazaar, Khumjung, Thame, and Pangboche, which remain to this day. The ease with which the region is accessible to Tibet permitted the preservation of cultural and commercial ties while simultaneously allowing the evolution of the distinct identity characteristic of the Sherpas. Isolation in the mountains in the northeastern part of Nepal ensured the preservation of their language, religion, and culture.
For centuries after settling, the Sherpas were not mountaineers. They were traders, farmers, and herders moving salt, wool, and rice along high passes between Nepal and Tibet, cultivating barley and buckwheat in the thin soils of the Khumbu valleys, raising yaks on the high pastures above the tree line. The potato was introduced to the Sherpa in the 19th century. Since potatoes grow well in high elevations, they became the staple of the Sherpa diet.
The mountains surrounding them including the one the world would eventually call Everest were not routes or objectives. They were the homes of gods.
The Faith That Shapes Everything: Nyingma Buddhism in the Khumbu
To understand the Sherpas, you must understand their religion. Not as background. As foreground.
Sherpas follow the Nyingma school, the oldest of Tibetan Buddhism’s four major schools. Founded by Padmasambhava (commonly known as Guru Rinpoche) during the eighth century, Nyingma emphasizes mysticism and the incorporation of local deities shared by the shamanistic, pre-Buddhist Bön religion. Sherpas particularly believe in hidden teachings.
The story of Sherpa religion begins with Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche), who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century. Before that, Tibetans practiced Bön, a native spiritual tradition filled with rituals and symbolism. While Tibetan Buddhism absorbed many Bön elements, it distanced itself from practices like human sacrifice.
What this produced in the Khumbu was a form of Buddhism that is simultaneously ancient and deeply local one that names the mountains themselves as sacred beings rather than scenic backdrops. The Sherpa worship numerous gods and goddesses in addition to Buddha, and they believe all of the natural elements mountains, rivers, forests, and caves are home to spirits. These spirits must be worshipped or at least appeased to prevent calamity from befalling the people. The Sherpa refer to Mount Everest as Chomolungma, the “Mother of the World.” Each clan has certain mountains and peaks that are sacred and protective.
For centuries, the Sherpa carefully went around the mountains rather than traverse them, as they felt this was the residence of the gods and goddesses and it would be blasphemous to climb them.
Read that again carefully. The people the world now calls “the best mountain climbers on earth” who fix ropes at 8,000 metres in winter storms, who have summited Everest more times than any other group on the planet originally considered climbing those mountains a form of sacrilege.
The shift did not happen overnight. It happened through contact with foreign expeditions, through economic necessity, and through a gradual religious accommodation a recognition that the mountains, even climbed, could still be honoured. Before every serious climb, Sherpa guides perform a puja ceremony at base camp: offerings of food, incense, and prayer, asking the mountain’s permission to ascend. It is not a performance for expedition clients. It is a genuine act of religious respect by people who have never stopped believing that Chomolungma is a goddess.
The monasteries of the Khumbu are the physical anchors of Sherpa spiritual life. Buddhism was probably brought to the Khumbu region towards the end of the seventeenth century by Lama Sange Dorjee, from the Rongbuk Monastery. He is thought to have been responsible for the founding of the first gompas (monasteries) in the Khumbu region, at Pangboche and Thami. The gompas at Tengboche and Namche Bazaar were established at a later date.
The establishment of the monastery at Tengboche in 1916 became a significant spiritual landmark in Sherpa culture, and it continues to be central to their religious practices. Tengboche Monastery, which stands at 3,867 metres with Everest and Ama Dablam visible from its courtyard, is not merely a religious site. It is the cultural heart of the Khumbu — the place where the community’s most important festival, Mani Rimdu, takes place each November under the full moon.
Mani Rimdu follows the lunar calendar and usually occurs in November. It is the most important Sherpa festival and takes place at Tengboche Monastery with an elaborate three-day celebration of masked dances, religious ceremonies, and community gatherings. Sherpas travel from throughout Khumbu to attend, making it both a spiritual occasion and a major social event.
How “Sherpa” Became a Job Title: The Accidental Revolution of 1953
Nepal opened its borders to foreigners in 1950. Three years later, everything changed.
On May 29, 1953, Tenzing Norgay a Sherpa from Thame village in the Khumbu and Edmund Hillary of New Zealand became the first confirmed people to stand on the summit of Mount Everest. The photograph of Tenzing on the summit, ice axe raised, prayer flags catching the wind, was transmitted around the world. It made Tenzing Norgay famous. It made the Sherpas visible.
What it also did unintentionally, but with consequences that lasted decades was cement in the global imagination a connection between the word “Sherpa” and the act of guiding people up mountains.
Before 1953, Sherpa men had been working as porters and high-altitude assistants on foreign expeditions since the 1920s — British attempts on Everest from the Tibetan side had relied heavily on Sherpa labour. But the summit photograph elevated a porter to a partner. It told a story the world wanted to hear: that the man who reached the top of the world was not a Westerner with equipment but a local, someone whose body and soul belonged to the mountain.
The tourism and mountaineering industry responded to this story by building itself around Sherpa labour. And the Sherpa community facing the closure of the Tibet trade route by China in the 1960s, which had been the economic foundation of their valley for centuries responded to the economic opportunity with extraordinary skill.
Porter activities in trekking that began in these expeditions quickly escalated into climbing, becoming the driving force of the Sherpa economy. The 1950s saw a revolution in Nepal.
The result was a linguistic drift that has never fully reversed. Today, in expedition reports and travel blogs and mainstream journalism, “sherpa” (lowercase) is used as a generic noun meaning high-altitude guide or mountain assistant applied to people who may not be ethnically Sherpa at all. Tamang climbers, Rai climbers, even some Nepali guides from Kathmandu are called “sherpas” by expedition clients and writers who mean well but are using the word incorrectly.
The distinction matters to the Sherpa community. It is the difference between being a people and being a profession.
Famous Sherpas Who Changed History
Tenzing Norgay (1914–1986) Born in Thame village, Khumbu, Tenzing was the son of a yak herder who became, on May 29, 1953, one of the most famous human beings alive. He summited Everest on his seventh attempt the previous six, including one on the same South Col route with a Swiss expedition in 1952, had come agonisingly close. After the 1953 summit, Tenzing became Director of Field Training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, where he trained generations of mountaineers. He never revealed whether he or Hillary stepped onto the summit first and always refused to be asked.
Apa Sherpa (born 1960) Known as “Super Sherpa,” Apa Sherpa from Thame village held the record for most Everest summits for many years reaching the top 21 times between 1990 and 2011. He has since retired from high-altitude climbing and now advocates for climate awareness, having witnessed the visible retreat of Khumbu’s glaciers across his career on the mountain.
Nirmal “Nims” Purja (born 1983) Technically a Gurung rather than ethnic Sherpa which itself illustrates the complexity of how Nepal’s mountain communities are understood by the outside world Nirmal Purja nonetheless transformed global perceptions of what Nepali mountain climbers can achieve. In 2019, he summited all 14 eight-thousanders in 189 days, a record previously considered impossible. His Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible introduced a generation of viewers to the superhuman capabilities of Nepal’s high-altitude climbers.
Lhakpa Sherpa (born 1973) Perhaps the most remarkable record holder in Everest history: Lhakpa Sherpa, born in Makalu village, has summited Everest more times than any other woman in the world 10 summits as of 2022. She lives between Connecticut and Nepal, working as a night shift cleaner in a grocery store between her summit seasons. Her story is one of the most extraordinary in all of mountaineering, and one of the least told.
Ang Rita Sherpa (1947–2020) Known as the “Snow Leopard,” Ang Rita summited Everest 10 times without supplemental oxygen a record that stood for years. He summited in winter. He summited without bottled air. He is, by the measurement of pure technical achievement without artificial support, possibly the greatest Everest climber in history. He died in Kathmandu in 2020.
The Genetics of Altitude: Why the Body Matters
The Sherpa community’s extraordinary performance at high altitude is not simply the product of experience or cultural comfort with mountains. It has a biological basis that science has spent two decades beginning to understand.
They were able to cope with the low oxygen of the high altitude because they evolved to have more red blood cells to increase the capacity of their blood to carry oxygen. Over the generations, they also learned to navigate the icy mountain terrain and negotiate crevasses, ice fields, and avalanche areas.
Specifically, Sherpa genetics show adaptations in the EPAS1 gene sometimes called the “super-athlete gene” which allows their bodies to use oxygen more efficiently at high altitude rather than simply producing more red blood cells (the latter adaptation, which most lowlanders experience when acclimatising, actually thickens the blood and increases the risk of stroke and clotting). The Sherpa body works differently at 7,000 metres than any other human population on earth. This is not a myth or a generalisation. It is genetics, confirmed by multiple peer-reviewed studies.
Centuries of living between 3,000 and 4,500 metres, farming, herding, and trading at altitudes that other populations visit only briefly, produced a people physiologically suited to an environment that is hostile to almost everyone else.
Life in Khumbu Today: Between Two Worlds
The Khumbu of 2026 is a place in genuine transition more so than at any other point in Sherpa history since the opening of Nepal to foreigners in 1950.
Today, around 150,000–200,000 ethnic Sherpas reside in Nepal, with small communities in the Indian states of Darjeeling and Sikkim. The Khumbu villages Namche Bazaar, Khumjung, Kunde, Thame, Pangboche, Phortse remain inhabited, but many younger Sherpas now divide their time between Kathmandu and the Khumbu, or have emigrated entirely to the United States, Australia, and the UK, where Sherpa diaspora communities cluster around the mountaineering and outdoor industry.
Dal bhat fills most plates around Khumbu lentils and rice that fuel long days of tough work on steep slopes. Yak milk turns into butter or cheese, adding rich bites to daily meals. Life among peaks ties closely to these animals, whose presence shapes daily survival.
The yak economy which sustained Khumbu communities for centuries has diminished significantly. With trade routes to Tibet closed since the 1960s, yaks are now primarily used for tourism logistics (carrying expedition loads to base camp) rather than trans-Himalayan commerce. Herding, farming, and traditional subsistence have been largely replaced by teahouse ownership, guiding, and the various service industries that support the annual flood of trekkers and climbers.
Tourism has brought wealth to the Khumbu. It has also brought complexity. The Khumjung school, funded partly by Edmund Hillary’s Himalayan Trust in the 1960s, now sends graduates to universities in Kathmandu and abroad. Namche Bazaar has a bakery, a bar, two ATMs, and excellent espresso. The satellite internet coverage in the Khumbu is better than in many parts of rural Europe.
What this means for Sherpa culture is a question the community itself is actively negotiating. The monasteries still stand. The puja ceremonies still happen before every serious expedition. Mani Rimdu still draws the Khumbu community together each November at Tengboche. The prayer flags still mark every high point, and every mani wall is still circumambulated left.
But a young Sherpa man from Phortse who spent the winter in Queens, New York, working in a Nepali restaurant, and who will return to the Khumbu in March to guide a French expedition to Ama Dablam he is navigating two worlds simultaneously in a way that his great-grandfather, who never left Solukhumbu, never had to.
That navigation is not a loss. It is what cultures do when they survive contact with the modern world: they change, they hold on to what matters, they let go of what doesn’t, and they keep going. The Sherpas have been doing this since they crossed the Himalayas from Tibet six centuries ago with nothing but four clan names and a profound, mountain-tested faith.
They are still here. The mani walls are still standing. Chomolungma is still a goddess.
A Note for Trekkers: How to Engage with Sherpa Culture Respectfully
If you trek in the Khumbu to Everest Base Camp, to the Gokyo Lakes, to any of the high valley routes of the Solukhumbu you will meet Sherpa people every day. Here is how to engage as a respectful guest rather than a tourist in transit:
Walk to the left of every mani wall. This is the direction of Buddhist circumambulation, and it is not a suggestion. Every mani wall in the Khumbu is a prayer made physical a devotional act by someone who spent days, weeks, or months carving those syllables into stone.
Remove your shoes before entering any monastery or gompa. Without being asked. The monasteries of Tengboche, Pangboche, Thame, and Namche are functioning religious spaces, not museum exhibits.
Do not photograph a puja ceremony without asking. A pre-expedition puja at Everest Base Camp is a genuine religious ceremony. It is not staged for visitors.
Learn your guide’s name and use it. Not “my sherpa.” His name. Or her name an increasing number of Khumbu women are now working as guides and climbing professionals. Dawa Yangzum Sherpa became the first Nepali woman to summit K2 in 2021. The trail is opening.
Ask questions. Sherpa people particularly those who work in tourism are accustomed to foreigners who never think to ask about their lives, their families, their faith, or their opinions about the mountains. A genuine question, respectfully asked, opens conversations that no amount of trail miles can deliver.
The Explore All About Nepal team is based in Kathmandu. We cover Nepal’s people, culture, and mountains with firsthand knowledge and genuine respect. Have a question about Sherpa culture or the Khumbu region? Leave it in the comments.