Posted on: 4 September 2010

Digital Book :
The Ascent Of Everest
By Brigadier John Hunt
Published by Hodder & Stoughton - 1953


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Read Book Online : http://www.archive.org/stream/ascentofeverest030342mbp#page/n5/mode/2up

Download pdf Book : http://ia331341.us.archive.org/3/items/ascentofeverest030342mbp/ascentofeverest030342mbp.pdf

अति सुंदर, अद्वितीय एवं अविस्मरणीय

Thanks! Do you have anything on Kailash?

Majestic!

Remember an abriged version of this was one of the prescribed texts for our ISC Exams in 1965. The Times correspondent who accompanied the expedition James Morris , subsequently went in for a sex change operation and renamed herself as Jan Morris. She has written one of the finest tryptichs on 'Empyah' .All volumes eminently readable.

Going back in time a bit..on a school trip to Darjeeling in mid 1961 , we'd visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute . As can be expected our real reason was to meet Tenzing . As luck would have it , he happened to be away on a mountaineering trip . Hence we were unable to meet him . However some 12 years later , one quite unexpectedly saw him at Calcutta's Brabourne Road Passport Office. No fuss or fanfare ..no entourage ..just him and his wife waiting quietly at the Enquiry Window. Had it not been for his famous face ,he and his wife could very easily have been mistaken for a very ordinary Nepali Sherpa couple ... Fortunately as it was in the afternoon- there was hardly anybody there ..to make a song and a dance over seeing him there. And certainly not the Passport Babus.

awesome...

Sir Edmund Hillary's auto biography"View from the Summit" (translated in Marathi by Shrikant Lagoo) makes a great read. Though several people in their nationalist fervor tried to create a controversy by claiming that Tenzing was the the first to set foot on Everest, and Hillary hogged the credit. Hillary himself said it is a moot point. His respect and affection for Tenzing is evident in the autobiography. The book opens with Tenzing's quote describing the wind on the seventh base camp as "the roar of a thousand tigers". The Western press and powers did neglect Tenzing's contribution. Only Hillary was knighted and Tenzing remained Sherpa. The Pope sent a medal of honor to Hillary.

Agree with you Shekhar ,Tenzing should have been equally honoured !

Honored by who? By the Pope? By the Queen?

If Sir Edmund was becoming knighted .ISn't that the same honour you wanted Tenzing to receive given that it was the Queen's coronation year ? Surprised that Hillary did not prevail given how close he and Tenzing were as friends and leaders of several atttempts to dummit Everest .What is your opinion Shekhar ?

Sorry to butt in ..but i seem to remember reading about a controversy about Hillary 's autobiography , which was first off the bat , being less than kind to Tenzing . A few months Tenzing's own biography authored by James Ramsey Ullman presented his own version of the events. This went onto become a world wide bestseller in 1956 . Whatever be the case , at Hillary's funeral service it was Tenzing's son Norbu Tenzing Norgay who delivered a most moving tribute. http://static.radionz.net.nz/assets/audio_item/0009/1300203/hillary-20080122-1200-Tributes_part_2-wmbr.asx

Yvonne: The Queen confers honours only on its own subjects. Hillary was a New Zealander. Nepal was never a part of the British empire. The Pope perhaps never knew that Tenzing existed. In any case the Church would never honour a Hindu. It was Nehru who gave him Indian Passport and outfitted him for his trip to England. Tenzing, his wife, two daughters all went to England with Sir Hillary. The autobiography which I read, does not have a single unkind word for Tenzing.

Thnx for the education Shekhar . So there was no way for Tenzing to be honoured by anybody . I thought Tenzing was a Buddhist .

Touching My Father's soul .A Sherpa's Journey to the Top of Everest by Jamling Tenzing Norgay with Broughton Coburn Foreword by the Dalai Lama sets the tone for the atmospherically spiritual telling of this expidition where so much went wrong and Intro by Jon Krakauer The Dalai Lama : JTN is the son of Trnzing Norgay , who with Sir Edmund Hillary , was the first man to reach the summit pf ME, or Jomolunga, as we call it inTibet.In this book he tells the story of his participation in the successful ascent of Everest in 1996.Although Tibetans generally do not attempt to scale mtn peaks , being content to cross the passes that characterize journesy in Tibet, JTN takes a very Tibetan view of the enterprise -he regards it as apilgrimage It is a pilgrimage on the onehand in tribute to his renowned and courageous father , but also because of the traditional Tibetan sense that such mtns are the abode of divine beings Of course, pilgrimage is often regarded as a physical counterpart to the spiritual way of life .Both require a special attitude , careful preparation, a determination not to give up whatever the cost , cpourage to overcome whatever obstacles get in the way, and caution in the face of danger .Members of mountaineering teams become acutely aware of their dependence on their compamions and at the same time their own responsibilty towards them I congratulate JTN both on his safe and successful climb of the world'd highest mountain and on writing a book that i amsure will be a source of signed The Dalai lama positive inspiration by many readers Signed ,The Dalai lama December 2000

Jon Krakauer says that of seventeen books about that infamous season on the world'shighest mtn , written within five years , this account is the only one by a Sherpa ;but Jamling's book should be read ...it is in fact among the best of the bunch JTN was the Climbing Leader of the 1996expedition that made th hugely popular IMAX film EVEREST. Although most of the other accounts of the E disaster were writtenby men and women who, like JTN , witnessed the catastrophe firsthand , this is the only one authored by a Sherpa...the Buddhist people whose homeland suurrounds Mt E, and who have played a singular role in the great peak's montaineering history the British ventured o...the only other book bnto its flanks in 1921 [Enthralling story of intrepid George Mallory !!] The only other book about climbing Evereat , was published 37years ago[ in 2000] is out of print and is difficult to find .That book is the autobiography of Jamling's father , world-renowned Tenzing Norgay ...The 1996 trajedy provides the narrative architecture that gives shape to TmFS, but as this title suggests , J's book is in ns small degree about his larger-than-life father and the complicated, emotonally charged bond they shared Its publication seems esp. propitious now that T's autobiography TIGER OF THE SNOWS has vanished from bookstore shelves In the heady months followin his 1953 E climb , Tenzing was catapulted to the loftiest reaches as a celebrity..lionized around the globe ...preminent hero of post pWW2 era.The newly crowned queen awarded the 39yr old Sherpa the George medal, the greatest honour that could be bestowed on a non-citizen of the UK. he was befriended by Indian Jawaharlal Nehru/ Many Hindus, convinced that T was a living embodiment of Shiva , made pilgrimages to te Norgay home .Born intibet , raised in Nepal, and a resident of India since he was nineteen, he had become a symbol of hopeand inspiration for milliuons of caste-bound Indians, poverty-stricken Nepalese , and politically oppressed Tibetans ...all od whom regarded him as acountyman JTN was born thirteen years later...1966 ? [ year I had my third child and my youngest son! ]... Tenzing was an "oldfashioned" father , strict and disciplined. Fatehr was gone months ata time fulfilling his obligaions "His absence was what I resented when I was a boy...a boy who wanted to join him and be with him Jamling , like his two brothers was sent toone of India's most elitre privste boarding schools , St Pauls's ,At eighteen he has the opportunity to join an Indian EVerest expedition.His father refused , explaining "I climbed Everest so that uou would never have to.Jamling was crushed graduating frin St Pauls's J attended Northland College , inWisconsin. which had bestowed a honorary degree on his father several years befor e Jamling would spend the next ten years in the flat surburban sprawl of New Jersey but he never ceased to dream of climbing Mount E. While at Northland , on May 9, 1986 [almost 25 year ago now ] he received news that his fater had collapsed and died "My desire to climb E only intensified " 1996 ...ten years later filmmaker and eminent mountaineerDavid Breashears [who would perish most sadly in this venture because of the incompetence of others]invited him to join the IMAX expedition His accoubt of the ensuing events is enthralling to read [It really is !! ] Krakauer writes so beautifully it is hard to paraphrase his words The extent to whick J's life has straddled thes two wildly incongruent worlds...that of the wealthy "white eyes ' or mirkau who hired them to risk their lives on our behalf ...is reinforced by passages in the book that delineate his religious beliefs ....With his father absent so much he question stringing prayer flags as little more than duperstitious gesture ...Buddhism had not firmly captured his heart .Skeptical he remained till 1996.Arriving at the foot of Jomolunga , he found himself drawn with surprising power by the traditions of his Buddhist ancestors The notorious storm that enveloped the peak on May 10.leaving nine dead climbers in its wake , played no small role in J's religious transformation."Once I arrived in the lap of the mountain, surrounded by Sherpas who believed,and confronted by a rich history of death ...and death itself...I could no longer remain cynical " TMFS is thus a story of spiritual evolution, with its concurrent struggles , failngs and irreconcilable ontradictions ,But more than that , it is the story of a son's quest to make things right with a father who was both a living legend and a painfully fleeting presence , and who died when the son was teetering on the cusp of adulthood .Probing his own heart , J asks , "What , honestly, was my motivation to climb Everest? For my teammates the expedition was somewhere between a job and a personal challenge and these forces were drawing me too. But I was driven primarily by a need for understanding

From the coveRof the paperback INTO THIN AIR by jon Krakauer , author od INTO THE WILD and EIGER DREAMS When JK reached the summit of E in the early aftn of May 10,1996, he had not slept in 57hrs and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion.As he turned to begin the perilous descent from 29,028 feer[roughly the cruising altitude of an Airbus jetliner ]twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly to the top , unaware that the sky had begun to roil with clouds ... In this definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest, JK takes the reader step-by-step from Katmandu to the mountains pinnacle , unfloling a breathtaking story that will by turns thrill and terrify

Giiven the strong nationalist sentiments prevailing at the time of the conquest of Everest, it is doubtful how an honour by a pope or a queen would have been received. It would have been appropriate to honour Tenzing with a Bharat Ratna considering... that he spent all his life in India (in Darjeeling) and had held Indian passport.

' John Krakauer's introduction includes this paragraph ,Shekhar The newly crowned queen awarded the 39yr old Sherpa the George medal, the greatest honour that could be bestowed on a non-citizen of the UK. he was befriended by Indian Jawaharlal Nehru[Who availed Tenzing of an Indian passport ] Many Hindus, convinced that T was a living embodiment of Shiva , made pilgrimages to the Norgay home .Born int Tibet , raised in Nepal, and a resident of India since he was nineteen, he had become a symbol of hope and inspiration for millions of caste-bound Indians, poverty-stricken Nepalese , and politically oppressed Tibetans ...all of whom regarded him as a countryman I would imagine that Hillary did not feel that Tenzing Norgay had been ignored .His entire family travelled with Hillary to England and he remained a celebrity , to the chagrin of his sons, till he died in 1986 when Jamling was barely 20years old and away in the USA

@Ameeta ...have the books piled up next to me gathered from my shelves .I am fascinated by the courage of these mountaineering men .Mallory's pluck is mindboggling in 1921;reading from The Second Death of Greorge M [ when they found his frozen corpse with some identifying info in a pocket]. A story that tells of how a man, a schoolteacher by profession, clad in a tweed jacket , makeshift gaiters wrapped around his legs , and hobnailed boots on his feet , and with a head full of romantic ideals , set out to conquer that bastion of rock that was considered unconquerable .On June 24 , 1924 he and his twenty-year-old partner shouldered their heavy oxygen sets and trudged up the steep scree slopes from CampVI, heading for the rock steps ...and the summit of ME. They never returned.... Mallory's boody remained hidden for seventy-five years ...many expeditions trooped past him on their acents May 1 1999...just eleven years ago ...about midday a memeber of the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition,Conrad Anker , notices a "strange patch of whie" on a ledge at 8,250 meters .Shortly afterwards he is looking at a white corpse , whose clothing disintegrates on touch,On the left foot is a well-preserved hobnailed boot .the shin and calf bones appear to be broken.When they find the initials G I M stitched into a ahandkerchieg and shirt collar and a letter written by ruth mallory in a side pocket , the identity of the body is clear Reinhold Messner continues : How can the expedition members determine whether Mallory and Andrew Irvine climbed the highest mtn on earth twenty-nine years before Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay? They hope to find the little pocket camera with which the two Englishmen could have taken photos of the summit;experts believe that the film might stil be developed if no light has penetrated the camera .

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379557/ http://www.amazon.ca/Touching-Void-Sub-Ac3-Dol/dp/B00020X94W/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1283845257&sr=1-2 There is a side documentary to this about the making of the film TouchTOUCHING THE VOID .Rent or purchase it ...book and DVD .It is a keeper for one of the scariest true stories of two men surviving a climb of Siula Grande , Peru. "But above all, this is a film about madness, in the creative, life-affirming sense - the sort of brilliant madness that would persuade two fresh-faced climbers in their twenties to climb a mountain no-one has yet scaled, and the madness that would lead a British film-maker to recreate their journey. Logic dictates that the journey MacDonald and his actors took on the Siula Grande would be rather safer than the one Simpson and Yates took, yet I freely admit to having no idea at all how it was achieved."

http://www.google.ca/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.ca%2FTouching-Void-Sub-Ac3-Dol%2Fdp%2FB00020X94W%2Fref%3Dsr_1_2%3Fs%3Ddvd%26ie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1283845257%26sr%3D1-2&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8&redir_esc=&ei=PO-FTLj5I421nged3rizAQ

http://www.amazon.ca/Eiger-Dreams-Ventures-Among-Mountains/dp/1599216108/ref=pd_sim_b_2 ALL THESE MOUNTAINEERS in print are phenomenal reads ...never a dull moment hanging on to a last gasp for survival