Mountaineers willing or have tried to tackle the challenges of Everest are likely conquest climbers.
Everest is the mountain at the top of their bucket lists not because it is the most prestigious or technically demanding, but only for it is the highest.
More than just visitors, conquest climbers crave the bragging rights; they want to be victors sitting at the throne of the summit.
Many things can go wrong when climbing a mountain; accidents do and will often happen, which is why even the climbers themselves call the experience a “Type 2” fun – an excitement enjoyable only in hindsight instead of when they’re doing it.
There have been thousands who summited Everest over the years.
The first climber confirmed to make the achievement was the always celebrated Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953.
But the first person to reach that summit was not alone when he did that; climbing beside him was the much unsung Tenzing Norgay, who never had the kind of recognition as Sir Hillary did.
10 /10 Porter Mountaineer
Tenzing Norgay was born Namgyal Wangdi in the village of Thami, sitting at 12,500 feet altitude in the Khumbu valley in northern Nepal, most likely in 1915.
The exact date of his birth is uncertain. He was a Sherpa, a Tibetan ethnic group native to the mountainous regions of the Himalayas, Nepal, and Tibet.
Just like a lot of his fellow Sherpas, as a young man, he moved to India, where he was then selected as one of the local porters for the 1933 British expedition to Everest.
Tenzing would join more trips in later years, starting from Tibet and Nepal.
9 /10 Immigrant Tibetan
Some other sources claim he was born in Tshechu, Tibet (now Tibet Autonomous Region of China) in 1914.
It remains unclear how Namgyal Wangdi ended up in Khumbu, Nepal – no one also knows why or when he presumed the name, Tenzing Norgay.
Assuming he was an immigrant Tibetan, he would have been a Khamba, a low social class with little wealth. Before he moved to India as a teenager, he had worked for an affluent family in Khumbu for several years.