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Edmund Hillary remembered

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Rich tributes were paid to the legendary mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary at a function at Lodhi Estate here.

Addressing the meeting organised to honour the memory of the great adventurer, New Zealand High Commissioner to India Rupert Holborow said he was following in the footsteps of Sir Edmund as a High Commissioner and not as an adventurer.

Reading out a eulogy to Sir Edmund from New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark that was delivered at the State Funeral Service in Auckland on January 22 this year, the High Commissioner said: “On May 29, 1953, a young New Zealander stood on top of Mt. Everest with his climbing companion Tenzing Norgay. That young man was Edmund Hillary, soon to be knighted and to become the most famous New Zealander of our time… He went to a height and a place no one had gone before. He went there with 1950s’, not 21st Century, technology.”

Third Pole

Pointing out that prior to Sir Edmund’s conquest of Everest the mountain had been described as the Third Pole, the High Commissioner, quoting Ms. Clark, said: “It had defeated 15 previous expeditions. Reaching the summit seemed to be beyond mere mortals. ..So when the news broke of the ascent by Edmund Hillary, a beekeeper from New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay, a sherpa from Nepal, it made headlines around the world.” From the early 1960s, Sir Edmund began the work which is his living legacy, founding the Himalayan Trust dedicated to the well-being of the Sherpa people in the high mountain valleys of Nepal and supporting the education of their children. and the development of health services, said the High Commissioner, adding that even though Sir Edmund had described himself as a person of modest abilities in reality he was a colossus.

Earlier, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage Chairman, S. K. Misra, said: “Sir Edmund devoted half his life, and limitless energy, to environmental causes and to humanitarian efforts on behalf of the Nepalese people.”

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