he Sherpa community estimates that there may be as many as 11,000 Sherpas in the New York area, mostly from the Solukhumbu area of northern Nepal in the region of Mt. Everest (known as Chomolungma), where so many famous Sherpa mountaineers have worked. Though some are in Brooklyn and elsewhere, most New York Sherpas live within a few miles of the Sherpa Gompa, a Tibetan Buddhist temple founded by the United Sherpa Association in the center of Jackson Heights/Elmhurst. Housed in an old church, the temple has become an important center not only for Sherpas but also for the wider Himalayan community. Down the block is another Sherpa community center where the Sherpa's Tibetic language is taught, and there are also efforts to launch an occasional Sherpa-language radio station and create a community hub upstate in Walkill.