Sherpa Tenzing, GM, who, with Sir Edmund Hillary, stood as the first men on the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, died in Darjeeling yesterday. He was 72.

A porter by calling, a mountaineer by choice, his invincible spirit took him to Everest's 29,028 ft. summit and the winning of one of the great prizes of adventure.

Tenzing Norgay was born at Tami, on the Tibetan side of Everest, in the summer of 1914 and, lacking a precise recorded date, adopted as his birthday the day of his triumph, May 29.

His boyhood was spent as a herdsman pasturing his father's yaks on the high slopes, long nursing an ambition to climb what he knew as Chomolungma, 'The mountain so high no bird can fly over it. '

At the age of 18, he made his way to Darjeeling. There, he was employed as a coolie until the Himalayan Club noticed him and engaged him as a porter.

He had hopes of being taken on as a porter for the 1933 Everest expedition. But he had no certificate of previous experience, and even though he cut off his pigtail, he was turned down as too young.

At last, in 1935, Eric Shipton gave him his chance and he was added him to a band of veterans assembled for a reconnaissance. He went to 22,000 ft. on the North Col, which was as far as the expedition went, and it gave him the chance of seeing mountaineering techniques.

He earned himself a place on...