Two of Time Magazine’s Persons of the 20th Century were the duo of Sir Edmund P. Hillary, and Tenzing Norgay. Their accomplishment was simply mindboggling. In an era in which there existed the most rudimentary of climbing gear, the two men became the first to summit Everest on nothing but heart.
On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first human beings to conquer Mount Everest–Chomolungma, to its people — at 29,028 ft. the highest place on earth. By any rational standards, this was no big deal. Aircraft had long before flown over the summit, and within a few decades literally hundreds of other people from many nations would climb Everest too. And what is particularly remarkable, anyway, about getting to the top of a mountain?Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time. [Link]
Tenzing was born in Tibet and grew up in Nepal. He was one of “Chomolunga’s people,” and so it was fitting that he was part of the first summit. Almost every great prize in moutaineering to be won, has now been won. Still, every mountaineer worth a dime aspires to one goal, however impossible it may seem. The Seven Summits. These are the tallest peaks on each of the seven continents: Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus, Aconcagua, Carstensz Pyramid, Vinson, & Everest. To date, less than 130 climbers have bagged all seven peaks and not a single one has been Indian, which is especially surprising given that India lies in the shadow of Everest. Well Gautam Patil is out to change that.
As an avid mountaineer, Gautam has been invited to present motivational talks at various venues including Sierra Club, REI Company Stores, and Any Mountain Company. He has shown bravery in dealing with people and situations in extreme conditions including those involving death and dramatic rescue operations. Gautam’s professional background is in Technology Product Management in Enterprise Software Products. He is a founding director of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association Inc.
He has already completed Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus, Aconcagua and is currently mounting an expedition up the Vinson Massif.
This being 2006 you could have guessed that Patil…has a blog:
January 17th, 2006Hello Everyone….
Well, I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first? How about the bad? We did not attempt summit today. The good: we got a rest day!
We had plans on making the first summit attempt today but because the weather took a slight change for the worse and the team needed another day to replenish strength, we decided to attempt summit tomorrow. This means another early wake up at 7am.
For the most part, I am completely packed. All my gear is inside the tent, arranged just so. My overboots are on top of my plastic boots and I dedicated each of the four pockets in my parka to a particular system. For example, all eye wear is in one pocket and all hand and foot warmers are in another because organization is a must to a safe and successful summit!
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p>And of course, everyone always wants to know what you are going to do or say at the top:
We were asked by President KalaamŽs office what my message would be and here is what we sent them. If the scheduling works out, will call him from the top: “I want every young person in India to follow their calling, to scale every height, and to give back to India in service and love as she has given to us. To do it selflessly and in the spirit of service. To take two steps forward for the less fortunate when taking one step for oneself.”
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p>The first step in completeing the Seven Summits is to be well funded. An ascent up Everest may run you $50,000 for equipment and guides.
We wish Patil well!
Tnenzig had very close ties with India. For some simple reasons: “Whether he chose it or not, Tenzing was now a world celebrity. He received many honors and was feted, among others, by world leaders and heads of state. (The Nehru family came to visit him in Darjeeling, and there is a picture of them in his home — three generations that include one sitting prime minister and three future prime ministers.) He was invited everywhere and did much travelling. He became the first Field Director of the newly-established Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, a post that he held for 22 years. He named the large house in Darjeeling that was provided for him by public subscription “Ghang Lha,” a family name with particular significance because of its association with his birth.”
“After Ang Lhamu died in 1964, he married Daku, a Darjeeling girl whose family came from his home village in Nepal. One of their three sons, Jamling, was to follow his father’s footsteps to the top of Mt. Everest in 1996.” “Tenzing died in 1986. The procession that followed his funeral bier was more than a kilometer long.”
He married an Indian, lived and worked in India. Edmud Hilary, he is another great man.
If you have not figured it out yet, I am a Himalayan fanatic. I will do anything do work there.
Kush: I second that. We need a branch of the Tata Institute there…
And to think I struggle with the Vancouver’s Grouse Grind… This is such an inspiring story! Interesting point you raise, Abhi, about lying in the Himalayan shadow and not yet accomplishing the 7-peaks – thats soon to change :)looking forward to leaving the rockies in my backyard to do some trekking in the karakoram in march!
oops, that should read without the “the” before Vancouver – reminds me of my hindi tutor speaking english in grade 4…
Kush, I remember from my visit to the HMI that Tenzing actually was offered Indian citizenship and accepted it. When he passed away, he was an Indian national.
After his summit of the Everest the Nepalese government wanted him to claim he was Nepalese and the Indian government wanted him to say he was an Indian citizen. In fact, he was both. As he said to the press at the time: “I was born in the womb of Nepal and raised in the lap of India.”
Ah, I have an excellent Sepia link here; one has been British Indian.
When I studied high altitude medicine, one of my lecturers was the world record holder for the youngest person to do all seven summits (both versions). His title has since been usurped by some youngER thing, but Major Sundeep Dhillon was a brief brown mountain-record-holder. The main character of a children’s book was even named after Dr Dillon.
The mini-research I did concerned the adaptations the Sherpa have made to high altitude, Tenzing Norgay and his community are really amazing people.
Tenzin Norgay lived in Darjeeling, as far as i can remember that is India, his children are Indian. A few of them went onto study at St.Paul’s School in Darjeeling (the Main Hoon Na school). One of his daughters was a member of the staff there, she used to be our matron and she told us alotta stories about her dad. Just because he was ethnically a Nepali, doesn’t make him a Nepal national, nor does it make him less Indian.
Awesome article. When devoted, mankind can achieve the seemingly impossible.
One of his daughters was a member of the staff there
I knew her! Pem Pem Tshering, she used to be the matron for my dorm! Strict lady, but we were all in awe of her, because of her parentage and the stick she always carried! Anyways, i think Tenzing Norgay was was from Nepal who had migrated to Darjiling, as the border there is very porus and there is a regular cross migration in that region. There used to be a rumor that Tenzing Norgay had worked as a coolie in the construction of the school chapel at St.Paul’s I don’t know how true that it is, but it is quite possible. His son Jamling who later made a movie on his climb of the Everest was also a student at the school.
Obnoxoius, when were you at St.Paul’s?
As an aside, I remember reading about a documentary about the ascent (narrated by Orson Wells) which showed Hillary at the top, breathing from his oxygen tank, and then puffing on a cigarette. Today that seems nuts, but back then, smoking was so much a part of mountaineering that it probably seemed natural.
My mother was an avid autograph hunter in her teens (when those things did mean something). Her ‘autograph book’ must be somewhere in my library in India and on its pages are the signatures of Nehru (in Hindi) and Tenzing’s. My mother met him in Madras when she was in high school. The Steel City of Jamshedpur is home to many athletic icons – among them a few mountaineers including Bachendri Pal and a few of your “average” hoopsters (7 feet+).
On whose behalf are you fighting for Tenzing?, He was a Nepali 75% of his lifetime, More so about Darzeeling, It was a part of Nepal before the Brit Uncles annexed her into India. All natives of Darzeeling are Nepali people who speak Nepali and are culturally Nepali, just like Tenzing. By the way he is more a Nepali to Indian than Gautam Patil is Indian to American, because Darzeeling was part of Nepal.
Why would you argue about Tenzing being Indian or Nepali, what he accomplished transcends the color barriers, itÂ’s a great feat by human standards and should be appreciated for just that. When are we planning a Sepia Mutiny trip? Should be the first blog group to scale Everest together!!!
nepali or indian, he is still desi. i thought this was a desi blog, not an indian blog.
Count me out. Shimla is the highest I’ve even been, and this low-land, oxygen-needy beach girl had a miserable time gasping for air, between puffs of a ciggy.
Seriously though, I thought I was doing pretty well until I almost keeled over in the Lower Mall. Nausea, headaches, delusions of grandeur…I stopped mentally converting currency and bought shawls like I was Michael Jackson on a Martin bashir documented shopping spree…and boy was I ever cranky. Poor mr.cicatrix cowered in a corner, desperately shelling pistachios in the hope that they might lighten my mood.
Thanks for the link BongBreaker. I was looking for just that link!
Cicatrix, if we can get you to give up the ciggys and train you for a month (the way Eminem trained 50 Cent in that video) then I think you’d be okay. The next time you are in ND we can have a ciggy intervention.
aw, Abhi..let me have my simple vices 😉
It’s more that I’m not a fan of hostile enviorements…and anyplace that’s too cold, too dry, too sparsely populated, or severely lacking in oxygen counts as hostile in my book.
I find any sort of ‘extreme’ sport (or extreme anything for that matter) highly ridiculous. Which doesn’t mean that I’m not enthralled by the exploits of those who do challenge themselves. I just prefer to read about it. Vicarious living, that’s the ticket!
(yeah, I’m a wuss. what of it?)
Ms. Urbane Cicatrix,
I am myself a climber wanna-be. In reality, we are in the same boat. There are some “real” climbers here where I work and live and one of them said to me, “Kush, you need to get a lot more fittter”. I know some serious Himalayo-philes. Abhi should, UCLA Earth Sciences is full of them.
This said.
From http://www.alpineascents.com/why-climb-everest.asp
“There is something about Everest and its neighboring cultures that intensify our desire to better understand it. The more we learn, the more we need to know. Its profound presence, geography, glaciology, Sherpa tradition, Buddhism, the mighty Yak and even legend of the Yeti draw us deeper into Everest’s mystique. By the time most people attempt to climb or visit base camp, they are so obsessed with Everest, the physical challenges are almost forgotten, until of course they reach the Himalayas. It is truly the stuff dreams are made of.
Mallory and the Statement: When George Mallory responded “Because it is there” to the ‘Why climb Everest question’, he passed on a sort of permanent approval to those who wished to risk their lives climbing.”
Cicatrix, You comment reminded me of this clip (NSFW) that Apul posted about.
FYI: Gautam Patil has been blogging regularly on IntentBlog…
But you loved your time in North Dakota!
Sherpa’s consider themselves to be ethnicaly tibetan, So much for appropriating id’s! BTW there was a book by tenzin’s son(jamling norgay) which i heard as an audiobooks It was pretty good and he created a controversy by putting a tibetan flag (just like his father did with the indian and nepali flags)
Sure, cuz I never left the Bunker. Y’all tied me to the spare computer in the
broom closetGuest Quarters with ethernet cables, remember?Besides, I could never consider anyplace with free-flowing
alcohol, ( I mean, fruit-juice, Abhi’s dad, fruit juice) hostile! ….I even loved the hazing…the like that time you deprived me of water for a week and made me brush my teeth with beer.Ah, good times.
Trickman, Obnxious, when were you at SPS? I left in 1960. I was fortunate to meet Tenzing at the Mountaineering Institute in 1959, and still have a photograph of the meeting! I went back to Darjeeling in 2003 and 2005 and in 2005 I met Jamling at St Paul’s. His brother Tashi was also a pupil at St Paul’s and he now lives, I believe, in Australia where he runs an “outward bound” style tour company. I think both Jamling and Tashi have climbed Everest. Jamling’s book is called “Touching My Father’s Soul”.
Just a correction to the above – Tashi was Tenzing’s grandson, not his son! He is currently a Motivational Speaker. And yes, they have both climbed Everest!
Malli Mastan Babu from India has climbed all the 7 summits in the world, also at a record pace. Google for him, you’ll get hundres of hits.
After the initial, official, celebrations of the conquest of Everest, Colonel Hunt and several other members of the expedition went by train to Ravenglass in Cumberland and visited the Outward Bound school in Eskdale. I need the date of that visit, if anyone remembers this and could forward it to me at tgrainge@telus.net I would be most grateful. Terry