Tenzing Norgay Was Knighted Less Than Hillary Even Though They Climbed Together

Tenzing Norgay was born Namgyal Wangdi in May 1914 along the high border between Nepal and Tibet, to a Sherpa family of yak-herders. He renamed himself after a young lama gave his mother advice about a healthier name; Tenzing Norgay roughly translates as "wealthy-fortunate-follower-of-religion." By his teens he had escaped to Darjeeling on the Indian side of the border looking for work as a porter. He climbed first as part of British and Swiss expeditions through the 1930s and 1940s, accumulating experience and a reputation among Europeans for being unusually unflappable at altitude.

In the spring of 1953, the British team led by John Hunt put Tenzing and the New Zealand beekeeper Edmund Hillary in the second of two summit pairs, after the first pair turned back near the South Summit. On the morning of May 29, the two left their high camp and made the summit ridge in about three hours, taking turns leading. They reached the top of Everest at 11:30 a.m. and stayed for fifteen minutes. Hillary photographed Tenzing on the summit holding the flags of Britain, Nepal, India, and the United Nations. There is no equivalent photograph of Hillary; he later said it never occurred to him to ask Tenzing to take one.

The Asian press inevitably wanted to know which of the two had stepped on the summit first. Tenzing, who recognized the question as politically loaded, answered it the same way every time. In his 1955 autobiography he wrote: "Hillary stepped on top first. And I stepped up after him." The disparity in honors that followed was sharper. Hillary received a knighthood. Tenzing received the George Medal, an award one tier below. He died in Darjeeling in 1986 at 72.