Depois de várias tentativas, Norgay conseguiu estar entre os
primeiros a chegar ao cume do monte Everest, quando da expedição
liderada por
John Hunt em
29 de maio de
1953. Edmund Hillary e Tenzing Norgay foram os primeiros a atingir o pico.
Uma vez que não era conhecida a data exata do seu nascimento, ele
passou a usar a data desta vitória para celebrar o seu aniversário.
Em
1952, Tenzing tinha atingido uma altitude jamais alcançada anteriormente, 8599 m, com a equipe de uma expedição
suíça dirigida por
Raymond Lambert. Tenzing tornou-se em seguida responsável pelo treinamento
in situ do Instituto de Alpinismo do Himalaia (
Himalayan Montaineering Institute), em
Darjeeling. Em
1978 ele fundou a empresa
Tenzing Norgay Adventures, propondo escaladas no
Himalaia.
Desde
2003, essa empresa é dirigida pelo filho de Tenzing Norgay e que se chama Jamling Tenzing Norgay, que também escalou o Everest em
1996.
There are conflicting accounts of his early life. The account that he
gave in his autobiography, accepted for several years, is that he was a
Sherpa born and brought up in
Tengboche,
Khumbu in northeastern
Nepal.
Khumbu lies near Mount Everest, which the Tibetans and Sherpas call
Chomolungma which in Tibetan means Holy Mother. He was a
Buddhist, the traditional religion of the Sherpas and Tibetans.
His exact date of birth is not known, but he knew it was in late May
by the weather and the crops. After his ascent of Everest on 29 May, he
decided to celebrate his birthday on that day thereafter. His year of
birth according to the Tibetan Calendar was the Year of the Rabbit,
making it likely that he was born in 1914.
He was originally called "Namgyal Wangdi", but as a child his name was changed on the advice of the head
lama and founder of the famous
Rongbuk Monastery, Ngawang Tenzin Norbu.
Tenzing Norgay translates as "wealthy-fortunate-follower-of-religion". His father, a
yak
herder, was Ghang La Mingma (d. 1949) and his mother was Dokmo Kinzom
(who lived to see him climb Everest); he was the 11th of 13 children,
most of whom
died young.
He ran away from home twice in his teens, first to
Kathmandu and later
Darjeeling. He was once sent to
Tengboche Monastery to be a monk, but he decided that it was not for him, and departed.
At the age of 19, he eventually settled in the Sherpa community in Too Song Bhusti in
Darjeeling.
Tenzing got his first opportunity to join an Everest expedition when
he was employed by Eric Shipton, leader of the reconnaissance expedition
in 1935. As a 20 year old his chance came when two of the others failed
their medical test. As a friend of
Angtharkay he was quickly pushed forward, and his attractive smile caught the eye of Shipton, who decided to take him on.
Tenzing took part as a high-altitude porter in three official British attempts to climb Everest from the northern
Tibetan side in the 1930s.
He also took part in other climbs in various parts of the Indian subcontinent. For a time in the early 1940s he lived in the
Princely State of
Chitral (that later became a part of
Pakistan on
partition of India) as
batman
to a Major Chapman. His first wife died during his tenure there and was
buried there. He returned to Darjeeling with his two daughters during
the Indian partition of 1947 and he managed to cross India by train
without a ticket and without being challenged by wearing one of Major
Chapman's old uniforms.
In 1947, he took part in an unsuccessful summit attempt of Everest. Canadian-born
Earl Denman,
Ange Dawa Sherpa, and Tenzing entered Tibet illegally to attempt the
mountain; the attempt ended when a strong storm at 22,000 ft (6,700 m)
pounded them. Denman admitted defeat and all three turned around and
safely returned.
In 1947 he became a sirdar of a Swiss expedition for the first time
following a magnificent performance in the rescue of Sirdar Wangdi Norbu
who had fallen and been seriously injured. The same year he climbed
Kedarnath peak in the western
Garhwal Himalaya – the first ascent of the peak.
In 1952, he took part in the two
Swiss expeditions led by
Edouard Wyss-Dunant
(spring) and Gabriel Chevalley (autumn), the first serious attempts to
climb Everest from the southern (Nepalese) side, after two previous US
and British reconnaissance expeditions in 1950 and 1951. The expedition
opened up a new route on Everest that was successfully climbed the next
year. Tenzing Norgay and
Raymond Lambert reached on 28 May the then-record height of 8,600 metres (28,200 ft),
and this expedition, during which Tenzing was for the first time
considered a full expedition member ("the greatest honour that had ever
been paid me"
)
forged a lasting friendship between Tenzing Norgay and his Swiss
friends, in particular Raymond Lambert. During the autumn expedition,
the team was stopped by bad weather after reaching an altitude of 8,100
metres.
In 1953, he took part in
John Hunt's expedition, his own seventh expedition to Everest. A member of the team was
Edmund Hillary,
who had a near-miss following a fall into a crevasse, but was saved
from hitting the bottom by Tenzing's prompt action in securing the rope
using his ice axe, which led Hillary to consider him the climbing
partner of choice for any future summit attempt.
The Hunt expedition totalled over 400 people, including 362
porters, twenty
Sherpa guides and 10,000 lbs of baggage,
and like many such expeditions, was a team effort.
The expedition set up
base camp in March 1953. Working slowly it set up its final camp at the
South Col at 25,900 feet (7,890 m). On 26 May,
Bourdillon and
Evans
attempted the climb, but turned back when Evans' oxygen system failed.
The pair had reached the South Summit, coming within 300 vertical feet
(91 m) of the summit.
Hunt then directed Tenzing and Hillary to go for the summit.
Snow and wind held the pair up at the South Col for two days. They set out on 28 May with a support trio of Ang Nyima,
Alfred Gregory and
George Lowe.
The two pitched a tent at 27,900 feet (8,500 m) on 28 May while their
support group returned down the mountain. On the following morning
Hillary discovered that his boots had frozen solid outside the tent. He
spent two hours warming them before he and Tenzing attempted the final
ascent wearing 30-pound (14 kg) packs.
The crucial move of the last part of the ascent was the 40-foot (12 m) rock face later named the "
Hillary Step". Hillary saw a means to wedge his way up a crack in the face between the rock wall and the ice, and Tenzing followed.
From there the following effort was relatively simple. They reached
Everest's 29,028 ft (8,848 m) summit, the highest point on Earth, at
11:30 a.m.
As Hillary put it, "A few more whacks of the ice axe in the firm snow, and we stood on top."
They spent only about fifteen minutes at the summit. Hillary took the
famous photo of Tenzing posing with his ice-axe, but since Tenzing had
never used a camera, Hillary's ascent went unrecorded. However,
according to Tenzing's autobiography 'Man of Everest'
when Tenzing offered to take Hillary's photograph Hillary declined – "I
motioned to Hillary that I would now take his picture. But for some
reason he shook his head; he did not want it".
Additional photos were taken looking down the mountain in order to
re-assure that they had made it to the top and that the ascent was not
faked.
The two had to take care on the descent after discovering that drifting
snow had covered their tracks, complicating the task of retracing their
steps. The first person they met was Lowe, who had climbed up to meet
them with hot soup.
Afterwards, Tenzing was met with great adulation in India and Nepal. Hillary and Hunt were
knighted by
Queen Elizabeth,
while Tenzing received the
George Medal from
Queen Elizabeth II for his efforts on the expedition.
It has been suggested that Indian prime minister
Jawaharlal Nehru refused permission for Tenzing to be knighted.
| “ |
It has been a long road ... From a mountain coolie, a bearer of loads, to a wearer of a coat with rows of medals who is carried about in planes and worries about income tax. |
” |
|
|
Tenzing and Hillary were the first people to conclusively set their
feet on the summit of Mount Everest, but journalists were persistently
repeating the question which of the two men had the right to the glory
of being the first one, and who was merely the second, the follower.
Colonel Hunt, the expedition leader, declared, "They reached it
together, as a team."
Tenzing was married three times. His first wife, Dawa Phuti, died young
in 1944. They had a son, Nima Dorje, who died at the age of four, and
two daughters: Pem Pem, whose son
Tashi Tenzing
climbed Everest, and Nima, who married a Filipino graphic designer,
Noli Galang. Tenzing's second wife was Ang Lahmu, a cousin of his first
wife. They had no children, but she was a foster-mother to his
daughters. His third wife was Dakku, whom he married while his second
wife was still alive, as allowed by Sherpa custom (see
polygyny). They had three sons (Norbu,
Jamling and Dhamey), and one daughter, Deki. Jamling would join
Peter Hillary,
Edmund Hillary's son, in climbing Everest in 2003 on the 50th
anniversary of the climb of their fathers. Other relatives include his
nephews
Nawang Gombu
and Topgay who took part in the 1953 Everest expedition. Tenzing also
has a great grand son, Tashi Tenzing, who lives in Sydney, Australia.
Tenzing died of a
cerebral haemorrhage in
Darjeeling,
West Bengal, India, in 1986, at age 71. His remains were cremated in
Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling, his favourite haunt.
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