Was glad to note that Kalimpong has finally made it into the calculations of the babus at the West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation, who put out a full page ad in The Telegraph extolling a township "Where The Mountains Meet The Sky". We, who have more friends in Kalimpong than in Darjeeling or Gangtok, had always thought that the "den of spies" {Nehruvian words) would have its day as the exclusive destination for high-end tourists. May it be so. Tathasthu.
Angrita Sherpa deserves a hundred khadas for having made it to the top of the world once again, but no thanks to the Rising Nepal daily, which carried the following news: Angrita Sherpa Saturday scaled Ml. Sagarmatha for a record ninth time, a feat no other mountaineer Ms equalled after Tenzing Norgay Sherpa reached the top of the world with a New Zealander in the early fifties. Several difficulties with this item, which was obviously prepared by a xenophobic sludge with origins in the midhills of Nepal.
If it is "record ninth time" the feat could not have been equalled by another mountaineer, could it? Tenzing Norgay was famous for having climbed Sagarmatha with you-know-who the first time, not for having topped it nine times. And why this inexplicable reluctance to name Edmund Hillary other than by nationality? Perhaps the reporter simply forgot Hillary´s name, just as he forgot the date 29 May 1953 of the first topping. Early fifties, my grandmother´s gout!
If few people remember Tenzing Norgay in Nepal—once (so briefly) a household word bandied about with nationalistic pride—it was touching to see his children bring out an advertisement in the Kathmandu papers in commemoration. Why has Himal, the Himalayan magazine, not done a posthumous profile of a man who, clearly, seems to have been a cut above all native climbers who have come after him? Could it be that they just made them better in the fifties—administrators, educators, politicians and mountain climbers?