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30 Years of Development and Change on the Roof of the World
A selection of images from Jolynna Sinanan’s photography exhibition in collaboration with high-altitude trekking and mountaineering guides the uneasy relationship between development and tourism in the Khumbu (Mount Everest) region, Nepal over the past three decades. The exhibition was part of Kendal Mountain Festival in 2024, which attracted over 27,000 viewers over four weeks.
Infrastructuring Everest exhibition featured images taken along the Everest Base Camp Trek between 1989 and 2024. Images in this selection were taken by Jolynna Sinanan as part of her ongoing research in anthropology on ‘The Everest Economy’, which examines development and change in the Everest region with three generations of high-altitude guides and porters.
At 2,860 metres (9,400 feet), the airport in the town of Lukla, or ‘the Gateway to Everest’ is the home of ‘one of the most dangerous airports in the world’.
Other towns along the trek such as Namche Bazaar have expanded exponentially due to the increase in tourism. Litter and discarded cigarette butts are now common sights along the trek. Historically, a market and trading point for the Sherpa populations of the Khumbu region, today, trekkers and mountaineers typically stay in Namche to enjoy cafés, pubs, restaurants and shopping for souvenirs or trekking gear before embarking on more difficult aspects of the trek at higher elevation.
Yet, trekkers can still find cafes in smaller villages further towards Base Camp such as in Dingboche.
The construction of tourist infrastructure and amenities are constant features, despite the remote location of the Sagarmatha National Park, where Mount Everest is situated. As there are no roads, all building materials are carried by yak, or by porters.
Everest mountaineering expeditions and treks would be impossible without the work invested by porters. For a hundred years, young Sherpa and more recently, Tamang and Rai men leave their homes in villages and towns in the lower Solukhumbu for weeks and months at a time to make up the workforce of Everest. Working conditions for porters have been hard and at times, high risk. Lower paid porters carry goods and fresh produce to accommodation and leisure facilities, higher paid porters work as support to carry luggage for trekkers and the highest paid porters are support for Everest summit expeditions. Young women increasingly embark on work in tourism as cooks and caretakers of porters’ accommodation.
Today, more porters and guides advocate for better paid and safer work conditions for the significant, essential role they play in the Everest economy. Facilities for porters have changed over the last two decades, from outdoor camping only to porter houses for warm accommodation, socialising over meals and drinks and for the most valuable amenity on a trek: accessible wi-fi.
Guides have started comparing images they have taken on phones during treks and mountaineering expeditions and reflect on them in relation to the implications of climate change. They assert that the Khumbu glacier is indeed receding, which has implications for water flow and purity as it moves down the mountain. They are also concerned with the expansion of Base Camp that they have seen in the last decade and the impacts of increased human activity, seen through more rubbish left behind or burned in pits. They are uncertain about the future of Everest tourism; they value their work, but they also see current directions of the industry as environmentally unsustainable.
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