‘He is renowned for making the first solo ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and for being the first climber to ascend all fourteen “eight-thousanders” (peaks over 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) above sea level).’
– Reinhold Messner – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
His first ascent of Everest without supplementary oxygen happened 2 years before I was born!
‘We are free to go everywhere, but we are not free to destroy the places where we make our experiences.’
‘He is the first American to have climbed all fourteen of the world’s eight-thousander mountain peaks, and the fifth person to do so without using supplemental oxygen.’
– Ed Viesturs – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
‘You’re getting above twenty-eight thousands feet. You’re going slower, and slower, and slower. And each step gets harder, and harder and harder. And even though your head’s aching, your lung’s screaming, your legs are tired, you have to say, ‘Yeah, this is pretty cool stuff!’
‘I didn’t want to go up there and hide behind the mask. I wanted to experience the environment. I wanted to stick my nose into it. And rather than reducing the mountains to my level, I wanted to try to climb them at their level.
‘Push yourself beyond what you think you can do.’
I’ve been a little obsessed with the Sherpa language a bit this week. Learnt a bit of Sherpa and Nepali languages when I went to Nepal last month (I have not written about it, but it was the most memorable trip ever!). Came back and realised that I’d learnt the mix of both languages. I learnt, for example, counting numbers in Nepali, and learnt some words, such as gagapala (grandfather), gagamama (grandmother), uru (aunt), aji (older sister), aju (older brother), anga (younger sister/ brother), etc., in Sherpa.
Been searching for some more information about the Sherpa language and it seems the language doesn’t have any formal written scripts of their own. They either use Nepali or Tibetan scripts. The ways some people transform the Sherpa pronunciations into English are various.
I would like to keep the limited resources I have found via Google here for reference.
The last one excited me the most as it seems solid, but as there’re over 360 pages, I’ll have to skim through first.
;)
Edited: 24th January 2013
Found a couple of more resources when I googled with the phrase ‘Sherpa linguist’ yesterday.
Edited: 25th January 2013
Found one more resource.
