Source:
https://scmp.com/article/405366/top-world

On top of the world

IT IS DIFFICULT to talk to Jamling Tenzing Norgay without mentioning his father and the Himalayas.

For Tenzing Norgay Sherpa was one of the first two men to set foot on top of Mount Everest, the world's highest summit, in the spring of 1953. The other was Sir Edmund Hillary.

Recently in town to give a lecture on his own 1996 ascent of Everest, Norgay, 37, had the difficult task of talking about himself and life in the Indian town of Darjeeling.

'I'm lucky to be the son of Tenzing Norgay. My karma must be good. I must have done something good in my past life to receive this good life,' the Buddhist began slowly.

Young Norgay led a normal life despite his father's fame. The fourth of six children, he would finish homework and rush to soccer games, gymnastics, and most of all, to go climbing.

'I climbed the side of the house, the trees, and fell a few times,' he said, smiling.

Norgay was six years old when he trekked up 'a small mountain of 18,000 feet' (5,600 metres) with his father. 'Small for mountains in Nepal,' he added.

By then he knew that mountaineering would remain his passion for life.

In honouring his father's wish, however, Norgay went to university in the United States and studied business administration - hard work for someone who 'can't stay in an office for an hour'.

After graduation, he took a job in New Jersey, leading deprived youngsters on rock-climbing treks and forest adventures.

Many of his wards had problems such as drug addiction, and Norgay was delighted to see how the programmes changed their lives.

'At first, they were arrogant. They didn't want to talk to you at all.

'By the third day, they were your best friends. They came and hugged me and thanked me. They became sweet little girls and boys with good hearts.'

But four years later, Norgay decided to return to Darjeeling, where he found the atmosphere to be more relaxing and friendly.

There he runs an adventure travel agency that was set up by his mother, which continues to take him to the mountains that never cease to amaze and thrill him.

'[Climbing] gives you a sense of how fragile we are as human beings, how small we are in the world. Beside a gigantic mountain, you are just a little dot.

'It's a good reality check. It makes you appreciate all the privileges that we have in the modern world: the TV, the chair, the nice room. Everything.'

But there was one unfulfilled dream: to go up to Everest, to pay homage to his father, to feel what he had felt, to see what he had seen.

'I had always known I would do it. The question was always when.'

When was on May 23, 1996. Invited as a member of a film crew, Norgay spent two months hacking at ice and trudging in waist-deep snow.

As the worst disaster in the mountain's climbing history unfolded on May 10, he helped organise the rescue and witnessed how nine lives were extinguished. He thought about giving up, but his desire to go up was stronger. Making the best use of his physical strength, being careful with every step he took, and constantly praying to the goddess residing on Everest, he finally made it.

'I cried out of joy and thought of my parents. I literally saw them, right up there [on the summit], with a big smile saying, 'You've finally done it.' '

Norgay has no plans to revisit the summit. Unless his three daughters, aged seven and four-year-old twins, want to go there one day.

'My eldest looks like a natural climber,' he says proudly. Climbing, it seems, is a family affair.

Look out for the full account of Norgay's 1996 climb on Friday and Saturday