{"id":5139,"date":"2013-05-28T19:01:40","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T01:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5139"},"modified":"2013-05-28T19:01:40","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T01:01:40","slug":"in-pictures-nepal-porters-heavy-burden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5139","title":{"rendered":"In pictures: Nepal porters&#8217; heavy burden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/inpictures\/2013\/05\/2013526151242545981.html\">Arpan Shrestha<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Solukhumbu, Nepal &#8211; Twenty-year-old Parshuram Thalung finished school in the fifth grade. As the eldest of the seven siblings, he became a porter to support his family, thereby joining a legion of men and women in Nepal who literally bear the burden of every bid to scale the world&#8217;s highest peak Mount Everest.<\/p>\n<p>Carrying heavy loads up high altitudes &#8211; from tents to gas cylinders &#8211; the porters are the unsung foot soldiers behind every expedition. But sixty years after the peak was first scaled, they still rarely occupy the spotlight and their back-breaking hard work is barely recognised.<\/p>\n<p>Porters are commonly exploited and discriminated against. The business is unregulated. The trade unions have eroded, and brokers now decide who gets to carry what and for how much.<\/p>\n<p>Hiking the challenging terrain with the best mountain gear and a small backpack is exhausting &#8211; but porters often make the journey without heavy clothing and sturdy footwear, while carrying loads of 50-70 kilograms on average.<\/p>\n<p>Some porters even carry large wooden planks that can weigh up to 150 kilograms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arpan Shrestha: Solukhumbu, Nepal &#8211; Twenty-year-old Parshuram Thalung finished school in the fifth grade. As the eldest of the seven siblings, he became a porter to support his family, thereby joining a legion of men and women in Nepal who literally bear the burden of every bid to scale the world&#8217;s highest peak Mount Everest. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}