SAJHAITE INTELLECTS....KINDLY SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS !! I THINK IT'S A VERY  INTERSTING TOPIC..NEPAL'S GREATEST SOUL IS IN A QUESTION MARK!!.OR IS THE SILENCE..THE DOUBT THAT HE IS INDEED A TIBETAN??? YOUR THOUGHTS WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATEDJAI NEPAL!!

yuma · Jan 6, 2009 8:59 PM

.If his family is saying that he was a Tibetan, then who are you to argue that it's not true? Also, I don't think it is fair to judge Tenzing Norgay as a traitor or anything else. He was poor, and he did what he thought was the right thing to do by accepting the Indian passport. If the Nepalese government at that time was really proud of him, I think they should have shown it by at least giving the man a passport to travel to England.

mickthesick · Jan 6, 2009 9:26 PM

YUMA: So what the fock? It does not matter where Tenzin comes from. What matters is what he did for people and country. I think he has done more than anybody in Sajha. I would rather have him as a PM than any chor gunda we have right now in Singa Durbar. US does not care where you come from. Uncle Sam cares about what and how much you contribute to this country. Thats all. Lets emphasize what really matters, not our typical EGO and Stereotype. We have to admire what Tibetans have done and achieved. At least, they have built 100s of monastries all over Nepal, made Nepal the center of Buddhist learning. These monastries have admitted 1000s of poor kids who could have turned out to be YCL or something else.  

191karma · Jan 6, 2009 10:15 PM

It should not be a big issue. Tenzing might have been born in Tibet and his family came to this side of the himalayas when he was a child. He grew up in Nepal and later went to Darjeeling. Whatever the book claims, Tenzing himself spent his time in Nepal and India and identified himself with these countries. Tenzing using Indian passport on his first visit to England as claimed by the writer of the book may not be correct. I read this portion from a book by MP Koirala. It's a letter sent to Nepal PM by his ambassador in Delhi. नेपाली दूतावास नयाँदिल्ली। ३ जुलाई, १९५३ माननीय प्रधान तथा परराष्ट्रमन्त्रीज्यूका समीपमा। महोदय, …...तेनसिंको (तेनजीङ नोर्गे शेर्पा) नेशनलिटी विषय यहाँको सेक्रेटरियट तहसम्म पनि निजलाई हिन्दुस्तानी जनाउन बहुतै कोशिस गरेका थिए, तर माथिका मानिसहरूको बहुतै असल विचार भएकोले र महोदयको आशीर्वादले हाहु गरी हाम्रै पासपोर्टमा सफर गराउन सफल भएकोमा बहुतै सन्तुष्ट मानेका छौं। हुन त यस किसिमको कुरा गरी मनुष्यले प्रकृतिमाथि विजय प्राप्त गरेको महान उपलक्ष्यलाई जातीय गौरव बनाई सङ्कुचित दृष्टिबाट हेर्नु राम्रो नभए तापनि अरूले कुरा उठाइहाले, तानातानी भएपछि हामीले पनि आफ्नोतर्फ खिच्न खोज्नु स्वाभाविकै कुरा हो। जे भए पनि सबै कुरा राम्रोसँग सम्पन्न भयो। भवदीय, विजय शम्शेर राजदूत

naivelyStupid · Jan 7, 2009 11:59 AM

i spoke to one of my childhood Tibetan friend from Budhanilkanta..he had this to say.. 1) Till date, NO Tibetans have ever been given citizenship status in Nepal, eventhough "REFUGEE STATUS" have been given to Tibetans prior to 1980's   So, the logic is Nepalese governement would have never given TENZIN NORGAY  the TIBETAN  a Nepalese citizenship, this is not mere argument but the TRUTH. KNOWING the above facts, I want to know from th SHERPA SAJHAITES what they have to say in this matter...PLEASE SHOW EVIDENCE HE WAS A SHERPA..not just by saying his heart was for NEPAL or SHERPAS...   THE POINT HERE IS TENZIN NORGAY WAS A TIBETAN & NOT A SHERPA or NEPALI..eventhough he brought so much wealth to SOLUKHUMBU REGION, HAVE we really looked into who the real TENZIN is and shown enough gratitude to these humble Tibetan folks.. I will get into more details once i hear from u people.   HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Never Ending Peace& LOVE   JAI NEPAL!!

yuma · Jan 8, 2009 6:34 PM

Has anyone heard of Fu Dorje Sherpa? He was the forth Nepal-born to climb Mt. Everest but was the first one not to accept offer from Indian government to have Indian citizenship. In fact, he was the first one who was really proud to be Nepali. Citizenship may be a choice but the pride of the flag is truly internal feelings. Whatever reasons other previous climbers had to choose different nationality, Fu Dorje didn't relent to their offers. I salute this great man for holding Nepalese soil despite of temptations from other governments.

bhakunde bhut · Jan 8, 2009 7:54 PM

so bhakunde dude,  who was the first??don't tell me it was tenzin sherpa ?? coz we know it was just a name..what a shame!!!!!! HELLO SHERPA PEOPLE.....TELL US, WHO THE REAL TENZIN IS..I AM SURE SOME ARE AWARE OF IT...WHAT A JOKE, OR IS THAT SHERPAS  FAIL TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE TIBETAN GUY?? JAI NEPAL

yuma · Jan 9, 2009 11:51 PM

Yuma,           It's just not only the name, it is more of the attachment and pride that entails the accomplishment of that name-bearer. It is the collective pride to that name. There is no doubt of his accomplishment. The feat is splendid and truly awe-inspiring. It was just not only Tenzing Dorje Sherpa, but three subsequent climbers too who changed their citizenship. Now tell me, what is shameful? The name or the act ???

bhakunde bhut · Jan 10, 2009 12:25 AM

Tenzing Norgay was a Tibetan. He migrate to khumbu, grew up with sherpas, sherpas helped him so much that later he changed sherap into sherpa. he studied in jhalsa, solu. Still there are lots of tibetan studying their.It is our goverment who didn't gave him citizen and opportunities but India did.So legally he was indian.

peter · Jan 10, 2009 8:49 AM

another interesting article: Secret past of the man who conquered Everest Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who accompanied Edmund Hillary to the summit of the world's highest mountain in 1953, was Tibetan and not Nepalese, a new book reveals. Ed Douglas reports It is one of the most romantic legends in mountaineering - the story of how a young Sherpa named Tenzing Norgay tended his father's yak herds on a high mountain pass below Everest before becoming, with Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to reach its summit in 1953. But while Hillary and the expedition's leader Lord Hunt both believed the Sherpa had been born in a remote mountain village in Nepal, a new book by American mountaineer Ed Webster claims that not only was Tenzing born in Tibet, but he spent much of his childhood there. The world's most famous Sherpa was not really a Sherpa at all. Even after Tenzing's death in 1986, the truth was considered too sensitive to disclose, not least for fear of embarrassing the Indian government which had supported Tenzing after his ascent. It would have handed a propaganda coup to the Chinese authorities in the Tibetan capital Lhasa that a 'Chinese climber' was the first to climb Everest. But now Webster has been given permission by the family to reveal the truth about Tenzing's real origins. Throughout his life, Tenzing remained vague about his background. In his autobiography, Tiger of the Snows, he obscured the truth of his childhood without quite denying it, telling ghostwriter James Ramsey Ullman he grew up in the village of Thame, in Nepal. In fact, his parents migrated there during the early 1920s after a period of financial hardship and debt to a local Tibetan governor. Tenzing, however, was more forthcoming about his birthplace, saying: 'I was born in a place called Tsa-chu, near the great mountain of Makalu, and only a day's march from Everest.' Tenzing also explains that when he was born, his mother had been on a pilgrimage to the nearby monastery at Ghang La, the name of Tenzing's house in Darjeeling. When Tenzing climbed Everest in 1953 he was hailed by the Nepali government in Kathmandu as a local hero who happened to live in India. Nepal's fledgling constitutional monarchy feared political domination by the new Indian republic and both countries saw great propaganda value in claiming Tenzing, the first humble-born Asian of the modern era to achieve global fame, as their own. Tenzing's caution about revealing his true origins was partly explained by this political wrangling. 'After we climbed Everest,' Hillary said, 'and Tenzing was invited to England, we were really in a jam because Tenzing had no passport.' The crisis was averted only when the Indian Prime Minister Pandit Nehru stepped in and personally ensured Tenzing received an Indian passport - something for which the Nepalese authorities never forgave him. Nehru became Tenzing's patron and authorised the establishment of a mountaineering school in Darjeeling, which Tenzing helped to run. To avoid political embarrassment, Tenzing described himself as 'born in the womb of Nepal and raised in the lap of India,' but that was far from the whole story. Now the full story has been revealed in Webster's Snow in the Kingdom, which describes an expedition in 1988 to the rarely visited East Face of Everest which approaches the mountain through the Tibetan Kharta Valley where Tenzing's home village of Moyun is located. Included in the team was Tenzing's oldest surviving son, Norbu, who was born in the Sherpa community at Darjeeling in India where his father had started his career as a climber after migrating there in the early 1930s. Norbu, like most Sherpas, knew all about his father's secret and, while in Tibet, he was able to meet long-lost relatives, including Tenzing's half-brother Tashi, and also to solve the riddle of Tenzing's birthplace. 'If Tenzing had come out with the truth that he was, in fact, a Tibetan, he would only have magnified his nationality problems, greatly disappointing India where he then lived,' Webster told The Observer. 'It's possible some Sherpas might have ridiculed him as something of an imposter, and as a social and cultural inferior.' All of Tenzing's three wives were Sherpas and he remains a potent hero in Darjeeling and the Khumbu. 'I believe Tenzing was a sensitive and a sincere man,' says Webster. 'His writings make this clear, so Tenzing never lied outright about his family origins - but he never told the full truth either. Perhaps he believed he was simply a mountaineer, and nationality didn't matter.' During the expedition in 1988, Webster identified the monastery at Ghang La as Namdag Lhe Phodang - the 'pure god's palace' - high in the Kama Valley of Tibet. The region is very sacred to Tibetan Buddhists, regarded as a 'heavenly refuge' in times of war and famine. Tsa-chu, or more accurately Tshechu, is another holy site in a remote side-valley not far from Ghang La. The yak pastures around the monastery command a superb view of Everest and are almost certainly where Tenzing spent his childhood summers. Both the family house and the monastery were destroyed following the Chinese invasion in 1950. Ironically, the Sherpa people originated in Kham in eastern Tibet, more than 1,000 miles from Everest, and migrated to Nepal in the sixteenth century. They still number only a few thousand in a Nepali population of 22 million but are world famous for their contribution to mountaineering. While the Sherpa homeland is considered to be the Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal south of Everest, the Sherpas have always had strong cultural and economic links with Tibetans across the border. Tenzing's cousin, a famous reincarnate lama called Ngwang Tenzin Norbu, founded monasteries at Rongbuk on the Tibetan side, and at Tengpoche on the Nepali side. Tenzing Norgay's cousin also gave him his name, which means 'fortunate supporter of religion'. The tradition of mountaineers hiring Sherpas began in Darjeeling at the start of the twentieth century; the hill men quickly proved the most reliable and physically capable porters. The best Sherpas were termed 'Tigers' and awarded medals. Mountain tourism proved lucrative and more migrated from the Everest region to India. Until 1949, Nepal remained closed to almost all Europeans. For Tenzing, whose parents were struggling to make a new life for themselves in the Khumbu, Darjeeling offered a chance for economic success, but his early years there were plagued by money problems as he sought to make his mark as a porter for Western mountaineers. Tenzing never saw his father again, and didn't return to the Khumbu to see his mother until 1952. When news of his sudden fame reached his homeland in Tibet, he was overwhelmed by 'all sorts of relatives I had never seen or heard of before'. Now, Sherpas earn thousands of dollars a year helping Western clients on Everest but, with the opening of Nepal to tourism, they no longer migrate to Darjeeling to look for work. Many Sherpas have become wealthy in a country where per capita income is $200 a year. The influx of tourists to the region Tenzing helped make famous has caused environmental problems, but has also helped alleviate the economic hardship caused by the Chinese occupation of Tibet. After the invasion of Tibet in 1950, China also claimed sovereignty of the Khumbu region of Nepal, which it saw as ethnically Tibetan.They mounted a number of Sino-Tibetan expeditions to Everest following the occupation for their propaganda value and still control access to the mountain. Kate Saunders of the Tibet Information Network told The Observer: 'The Chinese will understand very well the propaganda value of Tenzing's birth. They have never wasted an opportunity to stress Chinese sovereignty in Tibet.' Perhaps Webster's most intriguing claim is that the seven-year-old Tenzing Norgay may have met George Mallory, who disappeared on Everest in 1924 and whose body was discovered last year. According to the diary of fellow climber Guy Bullock, during the first expedition to Everest in August 1921, Mallory spent a day at Tenzing's home village before trekking through the summer pastures used by Tenzing's family to the foot of the mountain's East Face.

yuma · Jan 10, 2009 4:32 PM

Yuma: What matter is Tenzin's devotion to mountains, people and the region after his glory. It does not matter where he comes from. His office (Himalayan Foundation) provides huge assistance to people all over South Asia. They have elderly center in Kathmandu, health & education centers all over Nepal. They provide health care to people in Ladakh, Bhutan and to some extend even in Tibet. How about Prashant from Darjeeling. He is Nepali origin living in Darjeeling. But that does not that make him less Nepali. He prides himself being a Nepali after his victory. Like everyone, we are here for better future in the US. Many nepali holds US Citizenship. But that does not mean we are less Nepali even though we gave up Nepali Passport ( it is somewhere in the safe box). I hope you got the point unless you are ego maniac who acted like 1953 Nepali govt who did not issue passport to Tenzin for his travel arrangement to England.

191karma · Jan 11, 2009 7:00 AM