Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who was the first to summit Everest along with the rangy New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, spent the later period of his life in Darjeeling until his death in 1986.

Alpinist legend Heinrich Harrer, first to climb the Eiger’s fearsome north face with a party of 3 other men, fled to Darjeeling with the young Tenzin Gyatso after the People’s Liberation Army annexed Tibet.

As he describes in Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer had been wandering there after escaping from an Allied prison camp in Dehradun, first as a vagabond and outsider, then as the personal tutor of the 14th Dalai Lama.

In 1955, the party that summited Kangchenjunga—the highest unclimbed mountain at the time—set off from Darjeeling.

All told, Darjeeling is an important crossroads in mountaineering history and culture, and this connection is honoured at the Himalayan Mountain Institute, which is where I’m headed.

History of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute

Opened in November 1954 by independent India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI) stands in full sight of the snow-capped Himalayas, among the tall pines and cedars of Darjeeling's fabulous zoo.

The institute trains climbers through field expeditions, and was the training ground for Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to summit Everest.

Inside, there is much to delight the mountain and exploration enthusiast.

My favourite exhibit is a massive scale model that painstakingly recreates the Himalayan arc, from Nanga Parbat (Pakistan) in the west, to Namcha Barwa (China) in the east.

All the major and minor peaks are labelled with spiritual and geographical details.

Thoughtfully, the exhibit traces connections between Himalayan geography and sacred, often syncretic beliefs.

Sacred Himalayan geography and Mount Kailash

Mount Kailash—revered in Hinduism as the abode of Shiva and in Tibetan Buddhism as the seat of Demchok—stands near the headwaters of several great rivers of Asia, including the Indus, the Sutlej, and streams that feed the Brahmaputra.

The exhibit I'm looking at provides an esoteric interpretation of the Ashoka Chakra, the wheel on India’s flag, viewing it as a sort of cosmogram.

The hub represents Mount Kailash, the cosmic axis, and the spokes represent the holy rivers that, in myth, emanate from it—like the Ganges flowing from Shiva’s matted hair.

Hitler’s telescope at the HMI Museum

Upstairs, there is a smaller model of the Himalayas. I can retrace my entire trip across North India that has taken me and my companions, Cameron and Finn, from Delhi to Ramnagar via Agra, across to Darjeeling via Siliguri.

The vertiginous landscape of Darjeeling is depicted as a tiny green rill.

The most surprising exhibit is a giant telescope given to the commander-in-chief of the Nepalese Army by none other than Adolf Hitler in 1938.

The Führer presented it as a diplomatic gift in order to cement relations with the Nepalese, a country whose fierce soldiers the British respected but never brought under their rule.

The telescope, a fine example of early Carl Zeiss optics, seems to us improbably far from Europe.

The Great Trigonometrical Survey and the naming of Everest

The HMI provides information on the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India.

Launched in 1802, the survey aimed to map the entire subcontinent, determining the positions and elevations of mountains, rivers, and settlements.

The British East India Company required accurate maps for administration, taxation, and governance across the subcontinent, and this survey was the solution.

Besides measuring the heights of mountains, the surveyors were able to accurately trace a longitudinal arc across the surface of the Earth.

The planet’s exact shape and size were major geodetic questions at the time, and this arc helped scientists update their measurements.

Surveyors also learned how giant masses such as mountains locally change the direction of gravitational forces.

The most famous surveyor is George Everest.

The world’s highest mountain was named after him in 1865 by the survey authorities, even though Everest himself objected, preferring local names.

At the time, the surveyors had no verifiable local name for the peak, as Nepal and Tibet were closed to foreigners.

So, the decision fell to the Royal Geographical Society, who named it in Everest’s honour.

In our revisionist age, it still surprises me that Everest retains its imperial name, rather than being called Chomolungma, as it is known in Tibet, or Sagarmatha, the name used in Nepal.

Mallory and Irvine. Everest’s enduring mystery

Before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summited Everest during the 1953 John Hunt expedition, there were failed attempts.

The most fabled is the ill‑fated Mallory expedition.

In June 1924, George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine set off from their high‑camp on the northeast ridge of Mount Everest to make what would be the first ascent, but they vanished.

Whether they succeeded in reaching the summit remains one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries.

Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999 by a party that included Conrad Anker and organised by Eric Simonson.

The party took photographs of Mallory’s body for archaeological and archival purposes. They depict his corpse partially unclothed and decomposed.

In a grisly and unfortunate twist, the photographs were sold to Newsweek, which then made the deeply controversial decision to publish them, sparking outrage among Mallory’s family and the climbing community.

Like the victims of so many deaths on Everest, Mallory’s body remains where it fell.

Irvine’s body has never been found.

The hope was that a small Kodak camera carried by Irvine might contain photos of the summit.

But it has never been recovered, so whether Mallory and Irvine ever reached the top remains unknown.

Both the John Hunt expedition and Mallory’s earlier attempts relied on equipment that seems terrifyingly primitive by today’s standards, including heavy boots, basic ice axes, canvas tents, and simple oxygen apparatus.

In addition to newspaper cuttings, photographs, and other ephemera documenting the tragic Mallory expedition, Tenzing Norgay’s jackets and boots, along with early climbing ropes, and ice axes are on display at the HMI, honouring the memory of those early Everest pioneers.

Tenzing Norgay’s Legacy in Darjeeling

Emerging outside into the rear courtyard of the HMI, we pay our respects to Tenzing.

He was cremated at the HMI, and an elegant black chorten inlaid with gold stands in dedication to his achievements. Its inscription reads:

Padma Bhushan Tenzing was the first man in the world to climb Mt. Everest

on 29 May 1953, along with Sir Edmund Hillary.

He was Director of Field Training and Advisor to HMI from 1954 to 1986.

He was cremated here at HMI, his favourite haunt.

Every mountaineer should hope for such a high, sweeping vista to rest beneath and inspire the next generation to climb from peak to peak.

Jain food in the clouds

Cameron, Finn, and I try to get lunch at the HMI, but, unusually for Darjeeling which has so far enabled us to be gloriously anonymous, we prove too popular.

As we take a table under the window and begin to order, a phone is shoved through, recording us.

Forget about Tenzing Norgay’s tomb and exhibits that demonstrate centuries of mountain culture. Three gangly sahibs are much more interesting, apparently.

We hold back the best of our muttering British outrage, but eventually give up on eating here and search for lunch elsewhere.

Just off the Chowrasta, the marketplace in the centre of town, is a lofty restaurant called Udaan Nirvana that serves authentic Jain food and traditional vegetarian Indian dishes.

It hangs off the hillside.

With mountains in mind, we choose a window seat.

As for the view—there isn’t one.

At two kilometres above sea level in February, there is naught but cloud outside, rubbing away the ragged edges of town.

A man is painting the tin roof of his shed-like abode a bright shade of scarlet.

I’m surprised he isn’t thrown off balance by the pendulum action of his massive balls, as below him is a yawning great drop into a deep grey nothing.

Without ever seeing the summit

Darjeeling’s bookshops sell rare editions and works that aren’t widely available outside the Indian subcontinent.

Many of them feature mountains as their muse.

As a present for a friend who is an avid climber, I’ve brought a copy of Paolo Cognetti’s Without Ever Reaching the Summit.

Over a banquet of creamy kofta kadhi, sweet enough to pass for dessert, I read it cover-to-cover before giving it away.

It takes skill to write engagingly without a central thesis.

The book deals with Paolo’s attempt to navigate the 5000‑metre Dolpo mountain pass on the border between nearby Nepal and Tibet.

Debilitating altitude sickness has dogged his high adventures, causing him to pass out on top of the pass.

Yet he transmutes his thwarted adventure into a meandering and deeply personal essay about what mountains mean to him.

The delicate writing and restrained meditations match perfectly the shapeless grey folds rolling past the window, forcing me to imagine the dramatic view I’ve travelled opportunistically to see.

In my own small way, I’m frustrated at having travelled so far without ever seeing a summit, an almost inevitable consequence of visiting Darjeeling in winter.

But if the book has any central message, it’s to set aside selfish follies of conquest among such ancient and indifferent mountain landscapes.

As the author points out, Buddhist practitioners have long expressed this wisdom, often choosing to circle the bases of sacred mountains rather than climb them.

I still have some meditation to do before I can accept seeing the world’s greatest mountains only in miniature.