New York gets a street named after Tenzing Norgay

Urgen Sherpa and his team from the United Sherpa Association Inc was instrumental in getting this done, says Everester's son Jamling

Tenzing Norgay: File Photo

Vivek Chhetri   |   TT  |  Darjeeling   |   20.04.23 : The next time you are in the Queens neighbourhood of New York, consider hiking up to Tenzing Norgay Sherpa Way. 

Seventy years after Tenzing became the first person to climb Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary, a section of 75th Street in the Woodside locality of Queens will be "co-named" after the legendary climber on May 29.

May 29 is the day Tenzing and Hillary had ascended Mt Everest in 1953.

Jamling Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, an Everester and Tenzing's son, confirmed the naming of the road. “We have received a confirmation,” Jamling said in a WhatsApp message to The Telegraph from the Everest base camp in Nepal.

“Urgen Sherpa and his team from the United Sherpa Association Inc, New York, was instrumental in getting this done. It was proposed a few years ago and is finally being done. Thanks to team USA, NYC,” Jamling wrote.

Urgen is a former president of the United Sherpa Association.

Sources said an event would be organised at Tenzing Norgay Sherpa Way on May 29, which is celebrated as Everest Day across the world, by the US Nepal Climbers Association and the United Sherpa Association.

Jamling said the effort to co-name the stretch had started in 2017 with the United Sherpa Association Inc submitting a proposal tothen city council member Daniel Dromm from the 25th District.

This is not the first time that Tenzing has been honoured in the US.

In 2015, Nasa had “informally” named a region of icy mountains on Pluto as Norgay Montes. The US space agency had released a photograph and a simulated animation flyover of the Norgay Montes, which rise up to 3,500 metres, using images from New Horizons, a spacecraft that flew past Pluto in 2015 after a nine-year journey.

The mountains were probably formed no more than 100 million years ago, Nasa said, calling them “mere youngsters in a 4.56 billion-year-old solar system”. The region, which covers about 1 per cent of Pluto’s surface, suggests that Pluto is still geologically active.

Tenzing’s family had said they were “thrilled and honoured” by Nasa’s move.

“Nasa could have named the mountains after any American legend — its decision to use Tenzing Norgay’s name was unexpected,” Jamling had said.

In India, there have been demands for conferring the Bharat Ratna on Tenzing or name the Bagdogra airport after him.

Tenzing had received a host of medals from Britain, Iran, Nepal, the Soviet Union, France and Italy. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1959 and a posthumous Padma Vibhushan in 2008, 22 years after his death at the age of 71 in 1986.

Courtesy & source- The Telegraph