Tenzing's grandson returns to Nepal

Tenzing Norgay, a struggling high-altitude guide and porter from Solukhumbu in mountainous northern Nepal created history on May 29, 1953, along with New Zealander Edmund Hillary, conquering the world's highest peak Mt Everest for the first time.

However, soon after his historic achievement, Tenzing left Nepal to settle in India's Darjeeling town. Now, almost six decades later, the circle is complete with the mountaineering legend's kin returning to Nepal.

Tashi Tenzing, the legendary mountaineer's grandson and an Everest summiteer himself, has become a resident of Kathmandu with his marriage into a prominent Nepali tourism entrepreneur family.

In addition, this climbing season, he has returned to the mountain that brought his family fame, seeking to scale the world's highest peak a third time.

"He will make the final bid Wednesday," Tashi's wife Bandi Nima Sherpa told IANS.

"Besides guiding a client, he will also be carrying the Toyota flag to the peak."

An alumnus of Darjeeling's prestigious St. Paul's School and sociology graduate from Delhi University, Tashi married an Australian mountaineering guide, Judith Pyne, and settled down in Australia in 1990, acquiring an Australian citizenship.

Three years later, he led an expedition to Mt Everest to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first ascent. Though two members of the team reached the 8,848-metre summit, Tashi himself turned back after tragedy struck and his uncle and climbing partner Lobsang Tshering fell to his death.

But he was successful four years later and repeated the feat in 2002.

"But both the summits were from Nepal," Bandi Nima said. "Tenzing's family never made the attempt from Tibet. So this time he is taking the northern route to achieve that."

Last year, 42-year-old Tashi, then divorced from his first wife, proposed to Bandi Nima, a member of Nepal Tourism Board, whose brothers run a famed trekking agency as well as a domestic airline, and later moved to Kathmandu.

This time, Tashi is heading for Mt Everest with Klara Polackova, with whom he had summited Mt Cho Oyu last year.

"He met members of the Toyota family in Kathmandu, who are celebrating their 40th anniversary in Nepal, and being friends with them, promised to carry the Toyota flag to the summit," Bandi Nima said.

(IANS)

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