ON A CLEAR SPRING DAY in New York, Tsering Norbu Sherpa—former Himalayan guide, father, pop-music fan, oenophile, and independent taxi operator #2B35—was hauling ass through the streets of SoHo.

His left arm draped out the window, Tsering dodged shoppers, pointed out a Dustin Hoffman look-alike, ogled a Segway rider ("Wow, cool"), admired a set of Tibetan prayer flags ("We call them wind horses, you know"), and offhandedly listed the nightclubs he counts on for late-night passengers ("Pangaea, Lotus, Bungalow 8 ..."). Cruising past the lunch crowd at Felix, on West Broadway ("Looks like a beehive!"), he catalogued his tastes in rock (Nazareth, Bad Company), country (Hank Williams Jr.), and wine (Chilean cabernet, Oregon pinot).

Tsering was in a talkative mood. "These are different kind of mountains," he joked as we rolled uptown. "Building is good, but can't climb them!"

"To me, climbing mountains and driving taxi is pretty much the same," he went on. "They both have risk. You respect the mountains, you have less casualties. In the taxi, you must respect the flow. Otherwise you are going to get hit by some crazy drunk New Jersey driver."

Tsering moved to New York in 1998 from Darjeeling, India, with his wife, Nima. A decade later, he seems right at home in the city, dressed with just enough urban attitude—camo pants, Gap sweatshirt, Skyy Vodka T-shirt—to look the part, Brooklyn style. Like most Sherpas, Tsering is a devout Buddhist, and behind the wheel he exhibits the blithe self-possession of a man at peace. He drives like an old hand, which is to say, at high velocity. But he skips the NASCAR tactics, uses his turn signals faithfully, and handles his cab—a 2003 Ford Crown Victoria that he owns—as if it were a brand-new Lexus. He speaks to passengers in four languages (Urdu, Nepali, Hindi, and English), shrugs off bad tips, and infallibly delivers his fares to the correct side of the street.

Near Central Park West, we picked up a blond, pointy-shoed power-luncher headed uptown. Spying Tsering's ID card on the cab's Plexiglas divider, she poked her head through the window between us. Um, she wanted to know, was he really a Sherpa?

Yes, Tsering replied, his expression stoic. "Wow!" she said, slumping back, trying to think of what to say next. Tsering is incredibly humble; he didn't mention his former job with the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, back in Darjeeling, training Indian soldiers for tours of duty in places like the 21,000-foot Siachen Glacier—on the disputed boundary between India and Pakistan—or the fact that his circle of friends and family includes dozens of elite alpinists.

The woman leaned in again. "I'm assuming you've climbed Everest," she deadpanned. He hasn't. Only a fraction of Sherpas have climbed the peak, though the image of Everest all but defines them in Western eyes.

Tsering is used to the question. Getting typecast as a loyal sirdar is low on his list of passenger annoyances—nothing like the time a man threatened to report him "to immigration" because Tsering asked him not to smoke. (He's in the U.S. legally, on a renewable employment permit, and his green-card paperwork is in the pipeline.) It takes a lot to get Tsering riled. Marauding buses, jaywalking tourists—nothing seems to faze him. Nothing, perhaps, except the mountains he left behind.