heat with yak dung; clean, running water is scarce; houses are 
un-insulated despite the cold; multi-generational families live 
together and care for one another on the mountains. 

Of course, the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, has a more 

modern façade, but Sharp found that a complex blend of 
technologies and traditions prevailed even there. 

 “Kathmandu is an incredibly dusty and crowded city, with 

crazy traffic that somehow resolves,” says Sharp. “And cars can 
be 30, 40, even 50 years old, they never throw anything out. 
Bicycles, motorcycles, cars—they just make them work. And 
then there are the cows wandering across the road or lying by 
the side, yet they are safe.”  

Modern life would fall out of sight as Sharp and her team 

progressed up the mountain. 

“In Lukla, which is so high in the mountains and so 

isolated that it can only be reached by hiking or plane, there 
are no wheels,” says Sharp. “No cars, no motorcycles, no bikes, 
no carts. If you need to move it you do it by foot. People walk, 
period. They carry baskets. They can tote almost anything, but 
it is all on foot.”

But perhaps Sharp’s best experience in Nepal turned 

out to be meeting Pushpa Basnet, an activist who received a 
CNN Hero Award in 2012 for her work in caring for children 
whose parents are in prison. Basnet started the Early Child 
Development Center and was in the process of using the 
funds from her CNN Award to build a permanent home and 
school, The Butterfly House, for the children. 

It might take a lot to impress a woman whose daily work 

involves the logistics of jumping from a plane—and then 
carrying that out, again and again, but Sharp continues to 
follow Basnet’s work from afar, admiring the social worker’s 
commitment and drive.

And even though Sharp had planned for the jump 

of a lifetime that didn’t come off, she returned with an 
unexpected reward.

“On any journey, the defined goal or destination is often 

anti-climactic,” Sharp says. “We need to be in the moment 
with any experience so that what we take home is personal, 
and exists only in our memory.”

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Skydiving instructor Jen 
Sharp traveled to Nepal 
to attempt a world-record 
tandem jump. Logistical 
difficulties resulted in 
tandem jumps from lower 
altitudes such as this one 
(with Sharp at the top in 
the instructor position). 
Despite failing to meet the 
initial goal, Sharp says her 
encounters on the ground 
(previous pages) were 
unexpected rewards.