"Tenzing, your immortality is assured the world over", sang Nepal's folk poet Dharma Raj Thapa in celebration of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary's ascent of Everest on 29 May 1953. A joyous Nepal had welcomed him on his return from Everest. So intense was the feeling at that time that other members of the expedition, including Hillary, felt quite left out in the cries of 'Tenzing Zindabad' that rent the air wherever he went. Dharma Raj Thapa penned two songs glorifying Tenzing. King Tribhuvan awarded him with the Nepal Tara (Star of Nepal) medal, the highest civilian honour of Nepal (Hillary and Col John Hunt, the team leader, were granted lesser medals), and an offer was made of a house and other facilities should he decide to live in Nepal. Fifty years later, the name of Tenzing, the man who helped put Nepal firmly on the world map, seems to have been all but forgotten by the state.
Tenzing, the climber
Born in 1914 in the Kharta valley of Tibet, northeast of Everest, Tenzing moved with his family to the Khumbu area of Nepal when he was a child. He spent his early years in Thame village on the route that led to the Nangpa-la, the pass that allowed cross-border trade between the Tibetans and the Sherpas of Khumbu. As a young boy growing up in the shadow of Everest, he heard stories of men from foreign lands trying to climb Chomolungma, the Mother Goddess of the Earth, as the Sherpas and Tibetans called Everest. That would have been the first three attempts on Everest by the British from the north. Nepal was literally a 'forbidden kingdom' and totally off-limits to foreigners then.
At the age of 18, Tenzing left for the hill station of Darjeeling in India, following a path that had been taken by many Sherpas before him in search of a livelihood. Sherpas had become an integral part of Himalayan climbing, providing the much-needed high-altitude support for the 'assault' that characterised climbing in this part of the world, and he hoped he could be one of them. He tried to get into the 1933 expedition to Everest but was unsuccessful since there were many other experienced Sherpas who got first preference. He survived by doing odd jobs before receiving his first break as a porter with the 1935 Everest reconnaissance expedition led by Eric Shipton.