Sherpa Dance And Lukla Airport

As has already been mentioned elsewhere, Lukla Airport was constructed by Sir Ed Hillary to aid logistics for the development work he was undertaking in Khumbu. While that is the fact, here is the gossip, straight from the horse's mouth. Sir Hillary writes in his book 'Nothing Venture Nothing Win' that he bought six acres of land in Lukla for Rs. 6,350 (USD 634) in 1964 to build an airstrip. Then, cows with ploughs loosened the soil while workers with barrows carried away rocks. After all was done he had a fifty feet wide and twelve hundred feet long airstrip inclined at an angle of 12 degrees. But that wasn't a problem, neither then nor now. The problem was the loose soil which had to be hardened and that too without road rollers. His solution: Unlimited Supply of Rice Beer and Sherpa Dance!! Arm in arm, hundreds of half-dazed Sherpas stamped the soft ground with their feet, forward, backward and forward again. After two days of this thumping and many a gallons gulped, the surface was good enough for crazy cats like Hardy Furer and Emil Wick to land their Pilatus Porters on. All in all, Hillary mentions that Lukla airport was constructed in a record time of 4 weeks!!