The First Sherpa - Ang Tharkey (1908-1981)

Mountain climbing was serious business in the early days. Expeditions attempting to climb Peak XV (Sagarmatha, Mt. Everest, Chomolungma) undertook two month-long treks from Darjeeling across the Tibetan Plateau via Shekar Dzong to Rongbuk. When and if they survived that, the road was straight up the extremely difficult North Col route to Everest. Without oxygen, and with equipment that seems woefully lacking compare to what's used today. But climb they did. Reaching 28,000 feet and more, higher than any man had ever been before, they were turned back by premature monsoons and bad snow. The reward? They limped back to Darjeeling minus fingers and toes.

Ang Tharkey, who died in Kathmandu on July 28th 1981, belonged to the first generation of elite climbing Sherpas. Born in 1908 in Khunde in the Year of the Monkey (according to the Tibetan calendar) Ang Tharkay went to Darjeeling at the age of twelve in search of work with expeditions.

He accompanied Eric Shipton on eight of his pre-war expeditions in the Himalaya, including four on the northern route to Everest. Ang Tharkey had seen the days when high altitude porters were paid six annas compensation for each finger they lost by frost bite. And if the injury was really bad, and a porter could not walk back to Darjeeling, he was entitled by contract to receive a pony and one rupee compensation. Sherpas received blankets for high altitude camps, and sleeping bags were issued only during emergencies.

When Nepal was opened to expeditions, and the first reconnaissance groups traveled up the Dudh Kosi to Solu Khumbu, Ang Tharkey was with them. He had shed his traditional Sherpa pigtail, and dressed in smart woolen breeches, "but had same, shy reticence and quite humour", that Shipton remembered. He joined Eric Shipton, and Edmund Hillary on their 1951 expedition in which they tackled the treacherous Khumbu ice fall, the gateway to the southern route to Everest, and paved the way for the first successful ascent two years later. The expedition then went on to explore the upper reaches of the Imja Valley, the Hongu Basin, and then crossed the Tesi Tapcha into Rolwa Jing. Shipton was impressed by Ang Tharkey, and was moved to remark that he regarded his chief Sherpa as "a man of outstanding character and ability".

Ang Tharkey also took part in another epoch making Himalaya climb, the French Expedition to Annapurna in 1950, lead by Maurice Herzog. He reached the top camp above the "Sickle" on the north face of the first eight-thousander to be climbed.

After this, he was sent for training in technical climbing in Switzerland by the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling. Although he was invited by Herzog to bring his wife along to France, it is indication of Ang Tharkey's forthrightness that he refused to take his wife to save his "Bara Sahib" extra expenses!

In 1954, Ang Tharkey resigned from the HMI and set up his own business taking trekkers up to Kangchenjunga. In 1962, he became the oldest man to have climbed up to eight thousand meters, when he made it to the South Col with the Indian Everest Expedition. Although he then retired from active mountaineering, Ang Tharkey took a party up to the Annapurna Sanctuary in 1975, and sirdared the French Expedition to Dhaulagiri in 1978.

At seventy three years young, Ang was still extremely fit, and many remember the cheerful waves he gave from his bicycle on Durbar Marg. (He never rode in cars if he could help it). Ang Tharkey was looking forward to a quiet retirement in his orchard and farm in Simbhanjayang, when he was suddenly hospitalized and died of cancer.

Ang Tharkey is survived by his wife, four sons and a daughter.


- Kunda Dixit