The last one — a boy — was born while he was still in the mountains during his current expedition. Tsang made only two stops between the base camp, located at 5, meters, to the 8,meter summit to change, and covered the near vertical distance in 25 hours and 50 minutes.
She was lucky because there were barely any climbers on the way to the highest camp at South Col. After that, on her way to the summit, she met only climbers making their descent, which did not slow her speed climb.
There are only a few days of good weather left on the mountain this year, when hundreds of climbers line up to the summit, many having to wait for a long time in the traffic jam on the highest trail. She made a previous attempt on May 11, but bad weather forced her to turn back from a point very close to the summit.
She then returned last Sunday. An outbreak of the coronavirus among climbers and their guides at the Everest base camp has forced at least three teams to cancel their expeditions. But hundreds of others have pushed through attempting to scale the summit, at a time Nepal is in lockdown battling its worst surge in COVID Search Search.
Home United States U. In , Nepal opened up, and in , with the arrival of the Communists, Tibet closed down. In the days when the road lay only through Tibet, Darjeeling, which is near the caravan track from India to Lhasa, made a natural jumping-off place, where climbers could assemble, start breathing mountain air, check their equipment, learn something about the Himalayas, and, if they liked, be blessed before setting out by lamas from the nearby monastery of Ghoom.
In Darjeeling, too, the expeditions could recruit Sherpas, whose worth as high-altitude porters was discovered at the start of this century and who have helped in all the major attacks on Everest and the other high peaks in this stretch of the Himalayas. Last year, however, a German-Austrian party climbing Nanga Parbat, near the northwestern end of the range, had to do without them, for Nanga Parbat is in the part of Kashmir now held by Pakistani troops, and Pakistan is not hospitable toward Indians.
Being stopped by a frontier was a new experience for the Sherpas, who, all this century, have drifted innocently and unhindered across the otherwise stern border of Tibet and Nepal. If peaks were forbidden, it was not to Sherpas but to their Western employers—though this amounted to the same thing, since most Sherpas are not interested in climbing mountains by themselves. For them, it is a livelihood, made possible by Western whim. Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, has become the usual jumping-off place for climbers, but Darjeeling remains the recruiting ground for Sherpas.
They are generally hired through an organization called the Himalayan Club, which provides expeditions with advice and services, and which keeps dossiers on more than a hundred Sherpas, listing their vital statistics, their working records, and their good and bad qualities.
The Sherpas report early in the year, often walking from Namche Bazar for the purpose, so that they can have jobs by March, when the climbing season begins, and the Club assigns them tasks from sirdar, or foreman, down to common porter. Tenzing was born in a village called Thami, near Everest and at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet. His father owned yaks, and as a boy Tenzing herded them, often in pastures thousands of feet above Thami.
He also went on caravan trips over the Nanpa La, a nineteen-thousand-foot pass near the western shoulder of Everest. From the start, he lived as close to Everest as a human being could.
Two legends, both circulated by Tenzing and both perhaps true, have grown up to explain why he wanted to climb it. As everybody knows, he left an offering—a chocolate bar, biscuits, and candy—on the summit. Recently, however, he has been inclined to explain, making no reference to the Deity, that he had wanted to master Everest since his boyhood, when he caught glimpses of climbing parties and heard stories about them from older Sherpas.
There seems room for both motives, but the difference is there, and it reflects a general de-emphasis of the Buddhist faith in his affairs since last year. One reason for this, it seems, is that many natives have become touchy about their religion; some Westerners laugh at it, so Asians keep silent.
The Moslems broke off into Pakistan, some Sikhs would like to break off into their own Punjab, and the Himalayan Buddhists might get a similar idea. When Tenzing was a boy, his heart was set on going to Darjeeling, but his father insisted that he stay home and herd yaks. He obeyed until he was nineteen, and then, in , he and a few other young Sherpas fled to Darjeeling.
For a couple of years, he made his way by renting out his pony and doing odd jobs, and in he was hired as a porter for a British Everest party. He went again in and again in , learning the things that Sherpa guides must learn, including how to cook Western meals for sahibs.
His cooking is said to be good. The war suspended climbing for a decade, and it was not until that he tried Everest again, with the Swiss. He has tackled many other peaks as well. He has been through the mill. At times, one hears, he has been very down and very out, but long before his final success he was known as one of the most able Sherpa sirdars of this generation.
Another is Ang Tharkay, who went on the Annapurna expedition with the French and is now helping a group of young Californians scale Mount Makalu, a 27,foot peak not far from Everest. Tenzing and Ang Tharkay began climbing at about the same time, and people often compared them. A Buddhist might argue that he was incarnated for that end, and it does almost appear that he was destined to climb it.
It seems as if barriers opened when Tenzing drew near. Tenzing and Hillary were not the first men in their group to try for the summit; two British climbers, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, went ahead of them, but had to stop because their oxygen was running out.
The weather was perfect for Tenzing and Hillary, though there was every reason to expect it would be bad. Because of a siege of malaria, on top of the strain of the two climbs, Tenzing was run-down when he joined Hunt at Katmandu in March, , but between Katmandu and Everest he walked himself into shape. On the other hand, I have been told that in January, , Tenzing vowed at a dinner that he would climb Everest or die. For the British, this was a rather revolutionary idea—a bit like commissioning a man from the ranks—but the Swiss, who have no colonies, had set a precedent for it by treating Tenzing as a mountaineer in their own class and assigning him, along with Raymond Lambert, an Alpine guide, to make the big try.
They nearly got to the summit. All this was in the background at the time Hunt asked Tenzing to be one of the climbers. When Tenzing and Hillary reached the top, on May 29th, it was the end of the climb and the beginning of the arguments. Issue No. This came from the outside world, from a public conditioned to thinking that there must always be a winner. Mountaineers, especially when they are roped together, as Tenzing and Hillary were, seem to lack the zest for personal triumph.
Soon after Hillary and Tenzing descended, they said they had reached the top together, and that is what they have been saying ever since. The next controversy came when the party rejoined the world, in Katmandu. Nepalese nationalists objected to the news that Hunt and Hillary were to be knighted and that Tenzing was only to receive the George Medal.
Tenzing objected publicly, and became estranged, for a time, from Hunt and the rest of the British in the expedition. Feeling in Katmandu blazed high. After the party went back to India, the breach was patched up. There has been no objection to the climb, incidentally, from Tibetan or Chinese Communists, even though the border between Tibet and Nepal crosses the summit of Everest, and Tenzing and Hillary might have been accused of trespassing.
The Tenzing affair has worked the other way. But nowadays heroism seems to be a subjective matter and not an objective one; a hero is a man who has caught the public eye, as Tenzing has, and not one who meets an abstract standard.
Besides, if there is a standard in this case, it can only be the climbing of Everest itself. Over the years, the try at the ascent was a test promoted largely by men who believed in white superiority.
In the end, Tenzing, a nonwhite, passed it. Inevitably, this made him a hero to Indian nationalists. Tenzing is a Cinderella who has shown them that they, too, can be belles. Although Tenzing usually manages to keep above the conflict, he is hurt when, as has happened a few times, he hears Westerners say that many another Sherpa, if properly led, could have climbed Everest. I help to you. All same. We both together. To get much further, Tenzing needs an interpreter, and this is one way Rabindranath Mitra assists him.
Mitra is a slight young Indian who grew up in Darjeeling and has a small printing shop here. He got interested in Tenzing in , was struck by his personality, and, in , began to publicize him, writing stories for the Indian press and advancing the legend that Tenzing had three lungs, which caused Mitra to be accused in Himalayan Club circles of money-making sensationalism. After coming down from Everest, Tenzing experimented with other secretaries, or advisers, but he has apparently settled on Mitra.
It is an executive job, for whoever holds it controls access to Tenzing and thereby governs him to a large extent. Mitra is a warm, idealistic young man who seems to be devoted to Tenzing, but he is also an ardent Indian patriot and a Bengali—Bengalis are traditionally impassioned—and he may contribute tension as well as advice to his employer. His closeness to Tenzing is resented, of course, but Tenzing is evidently unmoved by that.
The exhibit room is large and light, with windows looking out over a veranda toward the peaks. The wall opposite holds the main display. There is a picture of Gandhi at the top center, with Nehru below at one side and Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh at the other.
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