In the upper Khumbu Valley, there are no roads. All material needed for building houses and lodges to accommodate the families and tourists have to be brought in by Helicopter or by porter. As you can understand, there are plenty of stones and rocks that can be used to build foundations of the houses, but many are too big to be usable.
Here you see how two men try to split a huge rock into smaller pieces by hammering a steel piton in a crack. It is hard to imagine the effort that these men – at more than 4000 meter altitude – make in order to make a few dollars in the tourist business, while over here we just build ugly pre-fab houses.
And it is hard to read at this downsized image, but the text on the hat of the lower man actually reads ‘fun’ :)
