Tenzing Norgay (c. 1914–1986) was the Sherpa mountaineer who, with New Zealander Edmund Hillary, made the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest on 29 May 1953. He had already been on six earlier Everest expeditions, later trained a generation of climbers at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, and left a family that is still closely tied to the mountain.
Most people know the photograph: Tenzing on the summit, ice axe raised, with the flags of the United Nations, Britain, Nepal and India snapping in the wind. What it does not show is the two decades of expedition work that got him there, or the family and institutions he left behind. This guide covers both.
Tenzing Norgay: key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Namgyal Wangdi |
| Born | May 1914 (exact date unknown; he later celebrated his birthday on 29 May) |
| Birthplace | Disputed: Khumbu region of Nepal (his autobiography) or Tibet (later family accounts) |
| Ethnicity | Sherpa |
| Home | Darjeeling, India, from the early 1930s until his death |
| Everest summit | 29 May 1953, about 11:30 am, with Edmund Hillary, on John Hunt’s British expedition |
| Everest expeditions | Seven: 1935, 1936, 1938, 1947, two in 1952, and 1953 |
| Highest point before 1953 | About 8,600 m with Raymond Lambert (Swiss expedition, spring 1952) |
| Later career | First Director of Field Training, Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling (founded 1954) |
| Main honours | George Medal (UK, 1953), Order of the Star of Nepal (1953), Padma Bhushan (India, 1959) |
| Wives | Dawa Phuti, Ang Lahmu, Dakku |
| Children | Nima Dorje (died in childhood), Pem Pem, Nima, Norbu, Jamling, Dhamey and Deki |
| Died | 9 May 1986, Darjeeling, aged 71 (cerebral haemorrhage) |
| Autobiography | Man of Everest (1955), also published as Tiger of the Snows, written with James Ramsey Ullman |
Who was Tenzing Norgay?
Tenzing Norgay was a Sherpa climber who became one of the founding figures of Himalayan mountaineering. On 29 May 1953 he and Edmund Hillary reached the 8,848-metre summit of Everest (now officially 8,848.86 m) as part of the British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt. They were the first people confirmed to have stood on the highest point on Earth and come back down safely.
The word “confirmed” matters. George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared high on the north side in 1924, and whether they reached the top is still debated. With no proof that they did, the 1953 climb stands as the first ascent. For more on the mountain itself, see our Mount Everest facts guide.
Seeing Tenzing only as Hillary’s partner misses most of his story. By 1953 he had more experience on Everest than almost any climber alive, and he went on to shape how the world saw Sherpa mountaineers.
Tenzing Norgay timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1914 | Born Namgyal Wangdi, probably in May; renamed Tenzing Norgay as a child on the advice of the head lama of Rongbuk Monastery |
| Early 1930s | Moves to Darjeeling, India, the recruiting hub for Himalayan expeditions |
| 1935 | Hired by Eric Shipton for the British Everest reconnaissance, aged about 20; marries Dawa Phuti |
| 1936 and 1938 | High-altitude porter on two more British Everest expeditions; receives the Himalayan Club’s Tiger Medal in 1938 |
| 1944 | Dawa Phuti dies; he later marries her cousin Ang Lahmu |
| 1947 | Joins Canadian Earl Denman’s small, unofficial attempt from Tibet |
| 1952 (spring) | Reaches about 8,600 m on the Southeast Ridge with Raymond Lambert on the Swiss expedition |
| 1952 (autumn) | Returns with the second Swiss expedition, which is turned back by cold and wind |
| 29 May 1953 | Summits Everest with Edmund Hillary |
| 1953 | Awarded the George Medal (UK) and the Order of the Star of Nepal |
| 1954 | Himalayan Mountaineering Institute opens in Darjeeling on 4 November; Tenzing becomes first Director of Field Training |
| 1955 | Autobiography Man of Everest published |
| 1959 | Awarded the Padma Bhushan by India |
| 1976 | Steps down as Director of Field Training; stays on as an adviser |
| 9 May 1986 | Dies in Darjeeling, aged 71; cremated at the HMI |
| 1996 | Son Jamling summits Everest |
| 1997 | Grandson Tashi Tenzing summits Everest |
| 2008 | Lukla Airport renamed Tenzing-Hillary Airport |
| 2023 | 70th anniversary celebrations in Kathmandu and Namche Bazaar |
Where was Tenzing Norgay born?
Nobody knows for certain. In his autobiography Tenzing said he grew up in Khumbu, the Everest region of Nepal, and named Tengboche as his birthplace. Later accounts, including one co-written by his son Jamling, say he was born at Tsechu in Tibet and came to Khumbu as a child. Both versions are in print, so any page giving a single definite birthplace is overstating the evidence.
What is clear is that three places shaped him: Tibet, the Sherpa villages of the Everest region and, from his late teens, Darjeeling in India. He did not know his exact birthday, only that it was in late May, so after 1953 he chose to celebrate it on 29 May, the day he stood on top of Everest.
From Khumbu to Darjeeling
Before Everest became a trekking destination, Darjeeling was where European teams hired high-altitude workers. Tenzing moved there as a young man looking for expedition work. His break came in 1935, when Eric Shipton needed extra men for a British reconnaissance of Everest. Two candidates failed their medicals, Tenzing’s friend Ang Tharkay put his name forward, and Shipton took him on.
Over the next 15 years he went from load-carrier to one of the most respected climbers in the Himalaya. That shift mattered. Sherpas did much of the hardest and most dangerous work on expeditions, but newspaper accounts almost always centred on the foreign leaders. Tenzing belonged to the generation that changed that.
The 1952 Swiss attempts
Nepal had opened to foreign climbers only a few years earlier, and the Swiss held the permit for 1952. On the spring expedition Tenzing climbed not as a porter but as a full partner to Raymond Lambert. The two pushed up the Southeast Ridge to roughly 8,600 metres (about 28,200 ft), the highest anyone had then reliably climbed, before exhaustion, wind and failing oxygen equipment forced them down.
They were a few hundred vertical metres from the top, wearing wool and leather, with oxygen equipment that barely worked. Tenzing went back with the autumn Swiss expedition too. He came into 1953 knowing Everest’s upper slopes better than almost any living climber. Altitude was the real enemy then as now; our guide to altitude sickness on Everest explains what happens to the body up there.
The 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition
John Hunt’s 1953 expedition was a large, carefully planned operation. Contemporary accounts describe around 350 porters carrying several tonnes of supplies to base camp, about 20 high-altitude Sherpas, and a core team of British, New Zealand and Nepali climbers. Tenzing was made sirdar (head of the Sherpas) and was also named a lead climber, a dual role no one had held before.
Over several weeks the team forced a route through the Khumbu Icefall, across the Western Cwm, up the Lhotse Face and onto the South Col at about 7,900 m. The Icefall is still the most dangerous section of the standard route; trekkers can see its lower reaches from Everest Base Camp.
The first summit pair, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, set out on 26 May. They reached the South Summit, about 100 vertical metres below the top, but problems with their closed-circuit oxygen sets and the late hour forced them to turn back. That opened the door for the second pair: Hillary and Tenzing.
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary
The two men had built trust earlier in the expedition. Low on the mountain, Hillary fell into a crevasse and Tenzing stopped the fall by quickly driving in his ice axe and holding the rope. Hillary later said that moment convinced him Tenzing was the partner he wanted.
On 28 May, supported by George Lowe, Alfred Gregory and Ang Nyima, they pitched a small tent at about 8,500 m. Next morning Hillary’s boots were frozen solid and took around two hours to thaw over a stove. At about 6:30 am they set off with oxygen sets weighing around 14 kg (30 lb) each.
The Hillary Step
Beyond the South Summit, the ridge was blocked by a rock step about 12 m high. Hillary wriggled up a crack between the rock and a cornice of snow, then belayed Tenzing up behind him. The feature became known as the Hillary Step. Its shape changed after the 2015 earthquake, and climbers today describe it as mostly a snow slope.
Above it, the two men cut steps along the final snow ridge and at about 11:30 am on 29 May 1953 stood on the summit of Everest.
Who reached the summit first?
The press soon pushed the question of who stepped onto the top first. For years both men said they arrived together. In his autobiography Tenzing settled it: Hillary stepped up first, a few metres ahead on the rope. Both he and Hunt stressed that it was a team effort, and that is how the expedition recorded it.
What happened on the summit
They stayed about 15 minutes. Hillary photographed Tenzing holding his ice axe with the four flags. There is no summit photo of Hillary: he later said Tenzing had never used a camera and the top of Everest was no place to start teaching him.
Tenzing left an offering of sweets and biscuits in the snow, in keeping with his Buddhist faith. Hillary left a small crucifix that John Hunt had given him. News of the ascent reached London on 2 June 1953, the morning of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
Honours, and the knighthood question
Recognition followed fast, though not equally. Hillary and Hunt were knighted. Tenzing, who was not a British or Commonwealth citizen in the same sense, received the George Medal, the highest British civilian award open to him. His main honours were:
- George Medal (United Kingdom, 1953)
- Order of the Star of Nepal, First Class (1953), from King Tribhuvan
- Padma Bhushan (India, 1959), India’s third-highest civilian award
- Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal (1953)
- The Himalayan Club’s Tiger Medal (1938)
Later tributes include Time naming him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, India renaming its top adventure-sports award the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award in 2003, and NASA’s New Horizons team naming a range of mountains on Pluto Tenzing Montes.
Tenzing Norgay’s family: wives, children and grandchildren
Tenzing married three times and had seven children. Several of his descendants have climbed Everest themselves, and others work to support Himalayan communities.
His three wives
| Wife | Marriage | Children |
|---|---|---|
| Dawa Phuti | Married 1935; died 1944 | Son Nima Dorje (died aged four); daughters Pem Pem and Nima |
| Ang Lahmu | Married 1945; died 1964 | No children of her own; she raised Pem Pem and Nima |
| Dakku (Daku) | Married by the 1960s; died 1992 | Sons Norbu, Jamling and Dhamey; daughter Deki |
As teenagers, Pem Pem and Nima travelled with their father to London in 1953 and met the Queen with the expedition team.
Deki Tenzing Norgay
Deki is Tenzing’s daughter with his third wife, Dakku. She moved to the United States and married Clark Trainor, an American. Their son, born in Los Angeles in 2001, is the actor Tenzing Norgay Trainor, best known for the Disney Channel series Liv and Maddie. He is named after his grandfather. Deki has largely kept out of public life, and we have found no reliable public detail about her career, so we leave it there.
Jamling Tenzing Norgay
Born in Darjeeling in 1965, Jamling is the best-known of Tenzing’s sons. He reached the summit of Everest on 23 May 1996 with David Breashears’ IMAX film team during that year’s tragic season, and appears in the 1998 IMAX film Everest. His book Touching My Father’s Soul (2001) tells the story of that climb and of his father. He now works as a speaker and leads the Tenzing Norgay Sherpa Foundation.
Norbu Tenzing Norgay
Norbu is vice president of the American Himalayan Foundation in San Francisco, a charity that funds education, health care and cultural projects across the Himalaya. He speaks often about the risks Sherpa and Nepali mountain workers face.
Tashi Tenzing and the next generation
Tashi Tenzing, son of Pem Pem, summited Everest in 1997, making the family three generations of Everest climbers when counted with Jamling’s 1996 climb. He has lived in Australia. Tenzing’s nephew Nawang Gombu, who also worked at the HMI, became the first person to climb Everest twice (1963 and 1965).
Tenzing never pushed his children into climbing. He often said that being able to send them to good schools, which he had never attended, was one of the things he was proudest of.
Life after Everest: the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute
Everest made Tenzing world-famous overnight, but his longest contribution came afterwards. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru backed the founding of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI) in Darjeeling, which opened on 4 November 1954. Tenzing became its first Director of Field Training and held the post until 1976, then stayed on as an adviser.
The HMI still runs subsidised basic and advanced mountaineering courses, and many leading Indian climbers trained there. Malavath Purna, who became the youngest girl to climb Everest in 2014, did part of her early training at the HMI. The campus on Jawahar Parbat includes a mountaineering museum, a statue of Tenzing and the site where he was cremated in 1986.
How did Tenzing Norgay die?
Tenzing died of a cerebral haemorrhage in Darjeeling on 9 May 1986, aged 71. He was cremated at the HMI, the institute he had helped build, and his memorial stands there today.
Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Lukla
If you trek to Everest Base Camp, you will almost certainly land at Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Lukla (about 2,860 m). The airstrip was built in 1964 under Hillary’s direction and was renamed in January 2008 to honour both men. Its short, sloping runway is famous among trekkers, and flights from Kathmandu (or Ramechhap in the busy seasons) depend heavily on weather. Our best time to trek Everest Base Camp guide covers how seasons affect Lukla flights.
Why Tenzing’s story still matters
For decades Himalayan expeditions relied on Sherpa climbers while the press focused on foreign leaders. Tenzing’s success made that much harder to ignore. He became a symbol of Sherpa skill and endurance, and of the people who had always been central to Himalayan climbing.
It is worth being clear about the word. Sherpa is an ethnic group from the high valleys of Nepal and Tibet, not a job title. Many Sherpas became expert guides, but not all Sherpas work in the mountains, and not every porter is a Sherpa. Modern record-holders such as Kami Rita Sherpa and Lhakpa Sherpa follow directly in his footsteps.
Where to see Tenzing Norgay’s legacy in Nepal
On the trek to Everest Base Camp, Tenzing’s story is close at hand:
- Lukla: you land at Tenzing-Hillary Airport on day one.
- Namche Bazaar: above the village, by the Sagarmatha National Park headquarters, stands a Tenzing Norgay memorial statue with views towards Everest. The Tenzing Norgay Sherpa Foundation, led by Jamling, has developed a Sherpa heritage centre on the same site, timed for the 70th anniversary in 2023. Most trekkers walk up here on their acclimatisation day in Namche Bazaar.
- Tengboche: the monastery at Tengboche is near the place Tenzing named as his birthplace, and the 1953 expedition stopped there on the walk in.
- Khumjung and Thame: traditional Sherpa villages that show the culture he came from.
Our Everest Base Camp trek passes through Lukla, Namche and Tengboche. If you are getting ready for the walk, start with our guide on how to train for Everest Base Camp.
Other Everest pioneers worth reading about
Everest has a long list of record-breakers. Jordan Romero became the youngest person to climb it at 13 in 2010, from the Tibet side. Malavath Purna became the youngest girl to reach the top in 2014, aged 13 years and 11 months.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Deki Tenzing Norgay?
Deki Tenzing Norgay is the daughter of Tenzing Norgay and his third wife, Dakku. She moved to the United States, married Clark Trainor, and is the mother of actor Tenzing Norgay Trainor, who is named after his grandfather.
What is Tenzing Norgay famous for?
He made the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary on 29 May 1953. He had been on six earlier Everest expeditions and later became the first Director of Field Training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling.
Did Tenzing Norgay or Edmund Hillary reach the summit first?
In his autobiography Tenzing wrote that Hillary stepped onto the summit a few moments before him. They were roped together, and both men and expedition leader John Hunt always described the ascent as a joint achievement.
How many children did Tenzing Norgay have?
Seven: Nima Dorje (who died aged four), Pem Pem and Nima with his first wife Dawa Phuti, and Norbu, Jamling, Dhamey and Deki with his third wife Dakku. His son Jamling and grandson Tashi Tenzing have both climbed Everest.
How did Tenzing Norgay die?
He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in Darjeeling, India, on 9 May 1986, aged 71. He was cremated at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute.
Was Tenzing Norgay Nepali or Indian?
He is linked to three countries. His birthplace is given as either Khumbu in Nepal or Tibet, and he lived in Darjeeling, India, for most of his adult life. Nepal and India both claim him as a national hero.
Did Tenzing Norgay use oxygen on Everest?
Yes. He and Hillary used open-circuit bottled oxygen on their summit push. Everest was not climbed without supplementary oxygen until 1978, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.
Why is Lukla Airport called Tenzing-Hillary Airport?
Nepal renamed Lukla Airport in January 2008 to honour Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary. Hillary had overseen the building of the airstrip in 1964, and it is now the main gateway for the Everest Base Camp trek.
