Coldplay

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a Yeti.

Sir Edmund Hilary
July 1919-January 2008

Leo may have inspired many people when he stood at the mast of the Titanic and proclaimed that he was the king of the world.
The truth is that there was just one king of the world. For some so to speak.
And last week he passed away.

One mountain. Two men. The legend of a lifetime. The year was 1953.

It was in 1996 many years later that I read about that fateful expedition. A week before I set out to conquer my own mountain - Pindari Glacier at a sacred 14,000 ft.
About half the height that Hilary and Tenzing had reached. On that fated trek, it kept coming back to me in slow motion. Both of them had to wait it out in the snow for two days miles away from the summit. In that sense - it is the mountain that chooses you. Its ways are sacred and no matter what, it has to be the one to decide.
Its funny how there are no pictures of Hilary atop Mount Everest. Its because Tenzing did not know how to use a camera and it never occured to Hilary that he should be taught on top of the world.
And now - we know how to operate every kind of gadget but we just dont know how to be heros.
15 expeditions had failed. Several had died. And in the years to follow - the same peak would be scaled by hundreds of enthusiastic others.
But was made their journey so special was the sheer reverence of it all. The planning, the waiting and the joy. Yet Hilary says that when he stood on top of Mount Everest - what he saw was a few other routes that he could have taken while climbing it and that he knew that he was thirsty for more adventure. Not for the sake of what he would ultimately find - but just for the joy of searching. He says that he felt the most excited only after he descended because that was on his mind as well.

What most of know starts and ends here.
But the truth is that Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing would dedicate their lives building schools and adopting villages in Nepal. And would time and again claim their place in the books of destiny.

The interesting thing is that the world for all practical purposes did not alter drastically the day Mount Everest was conquered. No miracle cure for death, no astounding invention for life - just a quiet lingering residual triumph for the human spirit that made two men from seemingly small countries put their footprints on the map of the world.
Something that would inspire the rest of us for years to come while we fought our own battles.
For in the end - in the words of Sir Edmund Hilary himself "It is not the mountain that we conquer - the most we can do is conquer ourselves"
R.I.P