Two Countries, One Mountain: Peter Hillary on his father's bond with India

When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Everest in 1953, they rewrote mountaineering history. They also did something quieter and longer-lasting. They forged a bond between New Zealand and India that has outlived both men.

Peter Hillary, Sir Edmund's son and an accomplished mountaineer in his own right, says the story begins earlier than most people realise. In 1951, four New Zealanders who had been climbing together around Mount Cook set off for the Himalayas. Everest was not on their minds. "It really came about due to a number of relationships," he says. A New Zealand headmaster who had climbed with the British explorer Eric Shipton in the 1930s put in a recommendation, and two of the young climbers were invited to join Shipton's reconnaissance of Everest's south side.

The timing was fortunate. Through the 1920s and 30s, expeditions had approached from the north, via Darjeeling and the Tibetan plateau. Once Tibet became part of China, that route closed, and Nepal opened its borders in 1950. Shipton's party, with Hillary in it, climbed the Khumbu Icefall and went high on Pumori, from where they could look into the Western Cwm. "They could see that the southern route was potentially doable," Peter says.

Edmund Percival Hillary circa 1953 (Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library)

A love of the Himalayas

Why did India take the two climbers to its heart? Peter points to culture. Ascetics, Hindu and Buddhist alike, have long gone to the Himalayas to contemplate and study, and the rivers that feed the holy Ganges flow out of them. "People in India have a great love for the Himalayas," he says. Add the highest mountain on earth, "the abode of gods", and bold climbers attempting it, and the appeal was obvious.

Tenzing, who was born in Tibet, raised in Nepal and had made his living on expeditions out of Darjeeling, was celebrated as an Indian hero. Peter tells the story of Tenzing mentioning to Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that he had been invited to fly to London with the British team, but had no passport and nothing suitable to wear. Nehru solved both: an Indian passport was provided by the morning, and he also had the pick of the prime minister's famous suits. Nehru also promised the establishment of a mountaineering institute in Darjeeling, with Tenzing as its first chief guide. "He was adopted by India, essentially," Peter says, "even though he was Nepalese."

Stephen Hewson: "Unlike many explorers who moved on from their great achievement, Hillary returned to the Himalayas again and again." (Photo: Himalayan Trust)

A masterstroke in New Delhi

That goodwill later proved diplomatically useful. In 1982 NZ Prime Minister Robert Muldoon closed New Zealand's High Commission in New Delhi, judging the trade too small to justify the cost, even though India was the world's second most populous country and rapidly developing. When David Lange came to power two years later, he reversed the decision and asked Sir Edmund to reopen New Zealand's presence.

"I think it was a masterstroke," Peter says. "It couldn't have been a better person." Hillary was a much-loved figure in India, and his appointment, Peter believes, "really opened doors". It also set the scene for a visit to New Zealand by Rajiv Gandhi.

A statue of Sir Edmund Hillary at Khumjung Secondary School (Hillary School) in Khumjung, Nepal, built in 1961 (Photo: Wiki Commons; author: Dario Severi)

Ocean to Sky

Of all his father's Himalayan ventures, Peter says, the 1977 Ocean to Sky expedition was the one the two of them treasured most. "It had everything." The team took jet boats from the Bay of Bengal across the Gangetic plains toward the Himalayas, and the welcome was overwhelming. Passing through Calcutta, Peter estimates, they waved to crowds larger than New Zealand's population at the time, then about three million.

When an Indian oil tanker met the expedition at remote villages to refuel the boats, 200,000 or 300,000 people sometimes turned up to see the new boats and the conqueror of Everest.

The journey also carried personal weight. Two years earlier, Peter's mother Louise and younger sister Belinda had been killed in a plane crash near Kathmandu, where the family was living while Sir Edmund built his second hospital and airstrip. The loss, Peter says, "halved the population of the Hillary family". Ocean to Sky was cathartic. "It doesn't take away the searing pain of loss, but it does help with learning to live with and carry on." He credits the warmth of the Indian people and the camaraderie of a team of Indian, Sherpa, New Zealand and Australian members.

It was not without danger. Near the shrine at Badrinath, the party tried to climb a 6,000-metre peak, and Sir Edmund fell seriously ill with altitude sickness. Ironically, Peter says, repeated rapid ascents after 1953 had left him more susceptible. The team wrapped him in a sleeping bag inside a collapsed tent and slid him down the glacier. After a descent of several hundred metres, someone pressed a can of Wattie's peaches into his hands. "He started really enjoying eating the peaches and slurping down the syrup," Peter recalls. "We all knew he was on his way back."

Stamps depicting Mount Everest in celebration of the 15th anniversary of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (Photo: Wiki Commons)

The connection today

The link endures through mountaineering and through cricket. New Zealand climbers still head to the Indian Himalaya, often in joint expeditions with Indian members, and Peter wants young New Zealanders to follow. He sees India as "an enormous opportunity" for the country. As for cricket, any visitor will find their airport taxi driver asking about the latest India-New Zealand match and giving his informed views on the Kiwi batting lineup.

Peter now chairs the Himalayan Trust, which supports about 108 schools in Nepal with computer laboratories, teacher training and literacy programmes. He reaches India roughly every couple of years, through the trust and his adventure tourism work.

At the heart of it, he says, still sits his father. "Right in the core of those activities is Ed Hillary," Peter says.

Stephen Hewson: "...the political and emotional geography of [Hillary and Tenzing's] achievement bonded New Zealand and India." (Photo: Wiki Commons; author: Horowhenua Historical Society Inc.)

Asia Media Centre

Banner Image - Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay above a Solukhumbu village (Photo: Himalayan Trust)