Bringing the mountains down

Almost in keeping with its name and nature of work,the Indian Mountaineering Foundation is located at a little height. Tucked as it is in one corner of the city on Benito Juarez Road...

A stone that Edmund Hillary picked up during his Mount Everest expedition,rare photographs and mountaineering equipmentat the Tenzing Norgay Museum,you can feel the mountains

Almost in keeping with its name and nature of work,the Indian Mountaineering Foundation is located at a little height. Tucked as it is in one corner of the city on Benito Juarez Road,next to the South Campus of the University of Delhi,its easy to miss the Tenzing Norgay Museum inside the Foundation. But Col Ravinder Nath,Director of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation,says they get many visitors. A number of schoolchildren visit the museum every month and so do mountaineers, he says. The museum with its unique and vast collection has a lot to offer to anyone interested in the Himalayas.

A stone that Sir Edmund Hillary picked up during his Mount Everest expedition,the tools and kit used by H C S Rawat when he scaled the Everest in 1965,rare photographs by Serbjeet Singh,kits used by women mountaineers Bachendri Pal and Santosh Yadav,the first edition of the Himalayan Journal brought out in 1929,the minutes of the annual meeting of the Himalayan Club in Bombay in the same year are all part of the display in the two-storeyed museum. Besides,there are a number of diaoramas of various peaks,detailed maps by Survey of India used during mountaineering expeditions,models,exhibits and equipment.

The museum also has an entire section devoted to the last 200 years of mountaineering history,complete with rare pictures of legendary mountaineers,most of whom were Europeans. The most interesting display is surely an equipment that was used to gauge the heights of the various peaks during an expedition way back in 1802.

Established in 1997,the museum came 40 years after the Indian Mountaineering Foundation was formed. Apart from photographs,tools and models donated by mountaineers,it has a library with around 6,000 books and journals on mountaineering.

The museum does not charge any fee and the Director will ensure that each and every exhibit is explained. And if you are the adventurous type,you can even try rock climbing at the Foundation or simply enjoy the sunset view from the building.

Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram