Tenzing Norgay Biography 
Tenzing Norgay was an iconic mountaineer of Nepali-Indian Sherpa origin. He along with Edmund Hillary became the first mountaineers known to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point above the sea level on earth. They made this historic achievement on 29 May 1953. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award in 1959. Many of his close relatives are mountaineers. His nephew Nawang Gombu was also a Nepali-Indian mountaineer who became the first man to have climbed Mount Everest twice. He was the youngest Sherpa to reach 26,000 feet also.
Tenzing Norgay was a Sherpa, one of the major ethnic groups who lived in mountains. There are conflicting accounts of his early life and childhood. As per his autobiography, born and raised in Tengboche, Khumbu, in north-eastern Nepal. But in an interview given to AIR in 1985, he said that his parents came from Tibet, but he was born in Nepal. Some records even suggest that he was born in Tibet or China, and that after spending childhood in Kharta, Tenzing went to Nepal to work for a Sherpa family in Khumbu when he was a child. His exact date of birth is unknown.
Tenzing ran away from home twice in his teens, first to Kathmandu and later Darjeeling, West Bengal. At that time the starting point for most expeditions was in east Himalaya. He was once sent to Tengboche Monastery to become a monk, but he returned. At the age of 19, he eventually settled in the Sherpa community, Darjeeling. He was married thrice. Following the death of his first wife, he married second, and after her death he married Dakku.
He was employed by Eric Shipton, when he got his first opportunity to join an Everest expedition when two of the others failed their medical tests. Thus at the age of 20, he became a part of 1935 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition. On the 1936 expedition, he worked with John Morris. In 1952, he took part in the two Swiss expeditions, and in 1953, he took part in John Hunt's expedition. Norgay and Hillary became the first people to conclusively set foot on the summit of Mount Everest on 29 May 1953. When Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling was set up in 1954, he became its first Director of Field Training.
Published: January 30, 2019
Updated: January 30, 2019
