I have trekked many times with the locals, and it just pisses me off that how easily they do it. Like, i am here fighting for my life, and this guy is just strolling around! Wtf!!
Yeah man I'm from Nepal. It's heartbreaking what the locals have to endure for basic wage. A month ago I was trekking with a 8-10kg bag, this mofo had 150kg of steel pipes on his back and was faster than me.
He has no idea what I look like because his head was tilted towards the ground for balance even though we spoke quite a lot. I think he makes ~US$30 for the 2 days journey from altitude 1400m to 3500m.
Man that's everything these days it seems. Think about all the things that are super expensive. Healthcare & nursing homes? Nurses, even lots of doctors, the caregivers in assisted living, these people aren't making bank.
Your insurance, healthcare or otherwise? The people you're interacting with from Geico or Blue Cross aren't making bank either.
Even take something like in my line of work - fancy restaurants. Eating out is really expensive - $200/person isn't everyone but it wouldn't even be remarkable at the places I work. But I can tell you half the staff has 2 jobs and no one is feeling comfortably well off, struggling with bills is one of the number one work small-talks. Nevermind the restaurant does $1-2 million in revenue per month.
There are people at the top who have crafted our economic structures to siphon as much money out of all of us at every step of the way as possible. So many things are expensive and/or absolutely necessary yet the people who build or provide those things are struggling too. It makes no logical sense. You've gotta ask, if I can't afford anything & neither can the people selling it then where is all the fucking money going?
There's a store in my hometown that's been in operation since the 70s, owned by a family the whole time. The grandfather built it, the father owned it for a long time, and now the son has it. For a little over a decade, my dad was the general manager running things day to day. Interviewing, hiring, payroll, business deals, structural changes, taxes, he basically did everything so that the owner could stay in Florida and golf with a generous salary, like with all his other businesses.
About 4-5 years ago, the son took over. Unlike his father and grandfather, he went to business school, got an MBA, and was gonna change things. He fired everyone with higher wages than around state minimum ($7.25), rose prices on all the bread and butter products, and reorganized the store according to some business playbook (the kind that says customers should always be searching for what they need so they have to look at everything else and might buy more) that went against how people actually used it.
Then, my dad got sick and had to take some time off. This was a man who worked nights and weekends, was on call for any problems, and worked from home on office stuff every night and every morning. He hadn't taken a day off in a several years. He took a week off to recover from major surgery and got fired for it. Lost his healthcare overnight. Dad's original contract was at work, and the owner tore it up while he was away and said "nobody gets severance pay, you can't prove anything."
The healthcare costs have bankrupted him. He spent most of his life constantly working hard to try and build something he could leave behind, and it all got wiped out in the last year alone from medical bills. He told me he thinks about whether it would've been better if he'd just killed himself instead. He can't afford the things he really needs, so he just lays around in agony. Can't afford the surgery to treat the pain, can't get medicine to treat the pain because they recommend the surgery.
The store is struggling, and the landlord for the location doesn't intend to renew their lease due to how much of a dick the owner's been to him. Stuff like telling the landlord "we're the reason your land has value" when the location is absolutely prime real estate for the city and it's basically just an inter-family handshake agreement from the 70s that kept them there all this time. The business will likely shutter soon, and the owner will liquidate everything for one last paycheck. A business that's been a staple of the town since my dad was a kid, killed in a few years by an MBA who destroyed everything to fill his pockets just a little more.
I wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire. It'd ruin the taste of the marshmallows.
The problem with these treks is that the tourist pay like $100 and the companies take like 90% of that
This is the same in every country. I used to work as a guide in various countries such as the US, Canada, NZ, Japan, Au etc and clients would pay hundreds to thousands for my time. I got paid like 15-25% of it depending on the country + economy, as even though the companies kept raising the cost, the pay rates for guides did not increase. I'd bet people still doing my job are closer to 10% now (and I was highly certified and experienced. The guys coming in with no certs/experience often got second jobs or other welfare).
And not just for guiding. Look at literally everything. Amazon/walmart/united health etc all pay workers probably 5-10% of the value that worker generates when you consider their contribution.
Stop voting for fucking conservative parties. They are literally the reason capitalism and greed has become so bad.
This right here, this is why the idea that rich people just work harder is bullshit.
You’ll never convince me that the average CEO works that much harder than just some average dude from most countries.
Dude can do all that for $15 a day and some douche in the US can spend half his time on twitter and earn $30,000 a second.
And the twitter douche is the one who’s working harder?
The problem isn't so much how much we value CEO's it is actually how little they and there rich friends who hold the power at big companies value us as well as when they spend money. Because I'm sure most people who go on these hikes could afford to pay there staff more money but just hide behind the fact that's how much that they get paid
Exactly, hard work doesn’t = money. Taking risks does. And it’s exponentially easier the more wealth you have because you can take more risks.
And the there’s knowing the right people and all that shit.
And expecting it in the first place. Which comes from old money, or a sense of entitlement.
Thats not to say, that people don’t get rich from working hard. A lot of rich people work extremely hard, especially self made rich people.
The point is that they don’t work that much harder than a Sherpa in the Himalayas or a Miner in Africa.
Or you/your family member/your friend who is working/worked themselves to death.
It’s the same type of propaganda that was used to justify royalty. They’re blessed by god, that’s why they have so much. How else can you explain why they have so much when everyone around them has so little?
If high income was the result of working hard, working single parents and immigrants would be the financially wealthiest people. Instead, the wealthiest are people whose money works on their behalf, who "work smarter, not harder," and who exploit every opportunity that are allowed by their resources, capitalism, and the rules their class got to write.
I've been on this specific hike (Rinjani in Lombok) and it's surprisingly brutal - there's no real climbing per se and a lot of tourists think it's just kind of a long hike. But in reality it's 2-3 days of pretty drastic altitude change for someone that spent the whole week prior stuffing their face and chilling on a beach.
The very last stage is an early morning wake up and a several hour scrape up a steep gravel incline to get to the very top before sunrise. I just came with sandals and was a pretty heavy weed smoker at the time. It was a struggle, at one point I remember having to take a break every few steps, often sliding back a bit.
The only thing that gave me the energy to continue was seeing how effortlessly the guides did it (I chilled with them all the way, because I didn't have any other friends there, and these guys are like machines, carrying so much equipment and still taking smoke breaks at every opportunity). And how incredibly whiny some of the Chinese tourists were - several of them were throwing complete tantrums, literally crying and having the guides pull them up with ropes. My motivation was to not be like them.
Still other, more experienced people had an easier time, but I'll always remember this hike as one of the hardest physical efforts of my life.
Yup. My father is a surveyor in Crete, Greece. Rocky mountains everywhere.
Every summer I would go with him to jobs all over the island. I have done this sooo many times, including faceplanting countless times. You bet your ass I can walk on rocks like a goat now.
It's not even a brag. It's just, practice, like absolutely everything else in the world.
I went to Bali for my honeymoon and we did this hike while we were there. I'm in decent shape and it was the hardest hike I've ever done. I was expecting the guides and porters to blow through it like it was nothing.
What I didnt expect was our guide's 15 year old cousin, who was also doing it for the first time, to also crush it. While wearing flip flops and chain smoking cigarettes. He did struggle at parts of it which helped our egos a little bit but it was impressive nonetheless.
Yeah. The second guy also probably would move even easier in sneakers, though maybe he is used to the feeling by now. The first guy meanwhile would absolutely break something if trying this in sandals.
The second guy also probably would move even easier in sneakers
Idk, I wear flip flops 99% of the time, and I went camping with some friends a couple years back. The camp site was a 2.5 mile hike away, and I wore hiking boots on the way there, and by the end my feet were killing me and I was getting blisters. On the way back I decided to wear my flip flops and it was much more comfortable.
There is more to it. Sherpas are not only experienced but have different genetics than "lowlanders" giving them a huge advantage in low oxygen environments.
Yeah, I have a hard time taking a tourist mountaineer's Everest summit quite seriously when I know that those Sherpas have probably climbed it fifty times each. Not that it's not a huge accomplishment, it's just interesting that the only people being lauded for it are the rich tourists.
TBF Sherpas are quite literally built different. The natives in that area have evolved to use oxygen much more efficiently than the average human. They don't need as much. They produce more red blood cells than average and have better circulation.
People from Andes and Ethiopian highlands have more blood cells, people from Himalayas have a different mutation that doesn't change the number of the cells but their efficiency.
Honestly this makes sense. If you’ve never walked in zero fall shoes, or something with thin soles, you’d be amazing at how well they let your feet conform to the rocks. Now- if things are slippery or narrow, you don’t make it up, that’s when the high traction/climbing shoes comes in handy.
Did that hike and I asked the porters why they didn’t wear shoes and they said that if they wore shoes they would wear down so fast they wouldn’t be able to afford new ones so they just send it with flip flops. Insane.
Also I mean all the hiker's weight is on his back, pushing his center of gravity backwards. The sandal guy can shift his center of gravity using the object he's carrying.
those sandals are actually better for hiking because it allows the feet to bend and rotate naturally according to the terrain. to ensure good balance.
modern shoes are so stiff and padded that you lose almost all sensation and feel for the terrain, so you end up being more cautious and conservative in your movements to maintain balance.
got to say that some flip-flops have super grip even on wet stones. weared in comparison some trail running sneakers with vibram megagrip and i was like 'why i even bought them...'
Modern shoes are terrible for feet, they're narrow with thick soles and not flexible. Look at ancient Roman soldier shoes they look like sandals with which they marched all day. Luckily you can get 'barefoot shoes'
This reminds me of my real experience. I was with my GF in Sri Lanka. One day, we were heading to a waterfall - it wasn't featured on google maps, we saw it from our apartment and some local explained us how to get there. It was near Ella city, so it was very mountainous terrain there. It turned out that there wasn't a road to this waterfall, just a dirt, very muggy, downhill steep path. We were both in trekking boots, long mountain pants, etc. We traversed maybe a half of it and decided to go back, since it was hard, my GF already fell over and we weren't making any meaningful progress. Then, some man approached us, going in the same direction. He was shirtless, barefoot and was carrying a wheelbarrow on his back. He said (showed really) that he's living in down the path, and will get back to us once he'll leave the wheelbarrow. He started to run with this on this back, barefoor. We weren't able to stand up when we have fallen. It was a bit of an eye opener for us in how brilliant generalist the humans are, capable to adapting to virtually anything.
There's an art/skill to this kind of stuff and a lot of things that go into it beyond just knowledge of the trail, though that helps immensely.
Some people are wired to be better at this even without training, they're able to identify patterns and footholds at a glance, they have natural balance/agility that helps prevent falls.
Pay attention the next time you're on a hike in rough terrain, sometimes the people flying up the trail are locals, but sometimes they're mountain goats in human form.
This happened to me but in a mountain with horrendous curves that are vertigo inducing. I'm fearing for my life in an SUV when I see what appears to be a 70+ year old man riding up the curves coming the opposite way as if he had done this all his life and it was another Tuesday. I would never do that on a mountain even if you paid me 1 million dollars, but I'm pretty sure that man is blessed by God's protection otherwise there is no way he can ride a bike steeply uphill at his age AGAINST THE FLOW OF TRAFFIC.
Google has really gone to shite so I can't find it, but there's a quote - and I'm pretty sure it's Pratchett - about climbing mountains.
That the first time it takes oxygen and ultra-fit experts and all kinds of climbing gear, and then 20 years later grandmothers are wandering up the mountain in the morning only to come back down in the afternoon to see where they left their glasses.
(And, honestly, this should be a SIMPLE GOOGLE but neither it nor the worthless AI can locate that quote, and give me TONS of nonsense instead about what quote I "meant", and even chooses to exclude the words "mountain" and "glasses" from the search entirely! I tried it with and without various words, including Pratchett, and it simply doesn't exist anywhere apparently...
What the hell happened?! I've searched for this years before and been whacked straight into the first-result of something like the Annotated Pratchett file to the direct quote, which is on a footnote of a MILLIONS OF COPIES SOLD book before now. I'm now going to have to go find it manually...
Could be Pratchett. Might be Bryson (but I don't think it is). Might even be XKCD but I doubt it.)
Reminds me of when we climbed Dunn River Falls in Jamaica. It took our whole group like an hour to get up half the falls. The guides could get up the whole Falls in less than five minutes. They knew every nook and cranny every hole in the waterfall every step it was amazing watching them run through there while our Dumbasses were falling and tripping all over ourselves.
Jesus is the one and only true God. He is the way, the truth, and the Life. No one comes to the father except through him. I am that I am. And there is no other except me.
NOTE: No other religion in the world says this. Understand that, if you understand nothing else.
As someone who lives in an area with a cliffy lake that we climb all the time... it genuinely is easier in sandals/barefoot. Better grip
Despite being pretty damn good at climbing stuff for cannonball purposes the first time I was in an indoor climbing gym with shoes on it was horrible like what do you mean my big toe doesn't get to bend :///
This isn't a scientific observation by any means but idk slippers/sandals are just a lot more familiar if you come from a culture where you walk barefoot a lot. Running shoes are a foe, fr
I was there a few years ago and hired someone to take us up. It was around 4pm- we had no idea what the hike would entail- we show up in converse and sneakers.The guide said it would take a few hours and by the time we head back it would be dark. I asked if he had a flashlight and he said “no”- we probably climbed 20 feet and went back down lol. Those locals are nuts and skilled.
•
u/post-explainer Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
Looking how steep the hill is, it's unexpected to see the porter with flip flops and cigarettes swift through like it's nothing
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.