Tenzing Norgay Cremated in Buddhist Rite : Family, Hillary Bid Adieu to the ‘Tiger of the Snows’

Tenzing Norgay, the “Tiger of the Snows,” was cremated Wednesday in this Himalayan mountain village.

Sir Edmund Hillary sat beside Tenzing’s wife, Daku, at the rain-drenched Buddhist ceremony attended by several thousand townspeople and a few hundred mountain climbers. Hillary stayed on long after Tenzing’s eldest son, Norbu, a student at a New York state business college, ignited the sandalwood pyre, sending billowing white smoke into the mountain mists.

“I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed having Tenzing around,” Hillary said in an interview the night before the cremation. For three decades, the two men’s names and fates--one a former New Zealand beekeeper, the other an uneducated member of the mountain Sherpa tribe--were historically, inextricably linked. Now that link was severed by Tenzing’s death from a lung ailment last Friday.

“Several people kept telling me that his death means the end of an era,” Hillary smiled. “They forget that I’m still here.”

Thirty-three years ago, on May 29, 1953, Hillary and Tenzing stood together at the top of Mt. Everest in Nepal. They were the first to climb the 29,028-foot peak, the world’s highest.

In the South Asian context, however, far more than the conquest of a mountain occurred that day. For it was not only a lanky white adventurer who stood at the top of the world. A short, stocky, brown man, who had once toiled as a domestic servant, was there also. The Third World was on an equal footing with the First World.

In the shaky period of post-independence India, this was a very important example. “I want you to produce many more Tenzings in India,” Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru proudly told Tenzing. “For our country lacks the spirit of adventure.”

On the eve of the funeral, Hillary reminisced in his hotel about the famous climb. More than anything else, it was a story of how East met West.

When the two men reached the summit, Hillary said, he turned to Tenzing and offered a “square Anglo-Saxon handshake.” Tenzing, however, ignored the hand and grabbed Hillary in a crushing bear hug.

200 Climbers Followed

Since that moment more than 200 others, men and women, have achieved the summit of Everest. It has become one of the most commonly climbed of the high peaks of the Himalayas and is booked for climbing parties well into the 1990s. In 1984, a 25-year-old Indian woman made the climb without oxygen equipment. In April last year, 55-year-old Texas oilman Richard Bass made the climb after conquering the highest peaks in six other continents.

“Techniques and attitudes have changed,” complained Hillary. “Many of these hotshot climbers are prima donnas compared to those of our time. They really are aware of the advantages of publicity.”

What Hillary did not suggest, however, is that some of the new climbers may be resorting to attention-getting devices because it is impossible to duplicate the kind of pure celebrity enjoyed by Hillary and Tenzing. The two men got there first, and that has made all the difference in their lives.

Hillary, now 67, went off on a few more adventures after Everest. He drove to the South Pole on a tractor in 1958. He was knighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II (Hillary and Tenzing’s climb was announced to the world on the day of Elizabeth’s coronation). He is now a distinguished diplomat from his native New Zealand, serving as ambassador to India, where he remains enormously popular.

True National Hero

Tenzing, who died at 72, was a true national hero. He was a favorite of former Prime Ministers Nehru and Indira Gandhi, and the king of neighboring Nepal, the land of Tenzing’s birth, officially dubbed him “Tiger of the Snows.” In Darjeeling he founded the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and was acknowledged as a guru of mountain climbing.

“He was the starting point for mountaineering in India,” said Col. Narinder Kumar, leader of a 1965 Indian expedition that put nine men on Everest’s summit. Kumar was one of the more than a dozen Everest veterans who came to pay their respects to Tenzing on Wednesday.

The mountaineer, who had one of the most engaging smiles around, was especially beloved here in Darjeeling, located in the misty tea-growing region of West Bengal state. Before Nepal opened up to outsiders in 1950, Darjeeling was the mountain climbing capital of the world; when hard-core mountain climbers started operating out of Katmandu, Nepal’s capital, Tenzing stayed here.

He lived in a fine three-story house given to him after his climb by a fund established by the Statesman newspaper in Calcutta. The front porch of the house is a small museum with souvenirs from his extensive travels, including a golden key to the city of Lancaster, Pa., a dinner plate featuring a picture of Mt. Rainier and an ivory statue of Mohandas K. Gandhi.

Tenzing kept the top floor of his home as a Buddhist temple, or gompa. He was a religious man. When he conquered Everest--which Tibetan Buddhists call Chomolungma, or “goddess mother of the world”--he placed offerings of candy and grain at the summit.

Dozens of Buddhist priests served at the funeral. The chief lama of the community led the cortege with a long silk rope tied to the truck carrying Tenzing’s body. Other priests slowly pounded drums or blew on sacred conch shells. The crowd itself was a hum of Buddhist mantras. The cremation platform was surrounded, one on each side, by followers of the four main sects of Tibetan Buddhism.

As the solemn cortege slowly made its way on the narrow roads of the city, hundreds of friends offered gifts of silk scarfs, a traditional symbol of friendship here.

“He was the pride of this place,” said Nand Kumar Sharma, vice principal of the prestigious St. Paul’s School here, which all three of Tenzing’s sons attended. (Three children live in the United States, two in Darjeeling and one in Singapore.) “He was the most famous man from this part of the world. He has inspired so many here.”

Travel Banned

Despite a police ban on travel here because of an incipient Gurkha nationalist tribal movement that has called a three-day strike, a few foreigners also managed to reach the city.

A Southern California psychologist, Dr. Vasanti Burtle, 67, who practices in Encino, said she has admired Tenzing since hearing his response to a question as to how “happy” he was reaching the top of Everest.

“The happiness came after,” he said.

Burtle, who was born in Bombay, India, said she made the pilgrimage to Darjeeling specifically to meet Tenzing: “I thought he might give me something to tell my patients about how to overcome the fears of everyday life.”