Where were you when they climbed the Everest?

The next fortnight will bring into focus once again the mountain peak that was once seen as synonymous with the summit of human endeavour and acquired a certain mystique because ‘‘it was there’’. It marks the 50th anniversary of the Tensing-Hillary conquest of the Everest. Peter Hillary, the 47-year-old son of Sir Edmund Hillary, will meet Jamling Norgay, the son of Tensing Norgay, at the base camp from where Peter will climb the southern face route from Nepal taken by his father. Meanwhile, Tashi Norgay, the legendary mountaineer’s grandson, is climbing by a different route and the pair plan to meet on the summit.

Moments like the conquest of the Everest are historical markers. In the June of 1951, when I won a cadetship at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, little did I imagine that I was on an unforgettable journey. It began with the 17-day voyage on the P&O liner S.S. Ranchi, which took us through the Suez Canal past the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps. Later the white cliffs of Dover loomed before one. We took the boat train from Tilbury docks to Victoria station. Our taxi ride to the Bernard Baron Officers Club in 6/8, Harrington Gardens, took us past the large neon Bovril Ad in Piccadilly Circus. But I’m getting carried away. My tale is really about the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the conquest of the Everest.

In May 1953, word got around rather slowly unlike today, with its instant worldwide communication network. The mountaineers were atop the Everest on May 29 but news first had to reach the base camp and only then could it — through a complex network — be flashed to the rest of the world. London came to know of it only on June 1. It was said that the news flash was manipulated to coincide with the coronation, as a gift to Queen Elizabeth!

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We got to hear of it most dramatically. On a pavement in Pall Mall, we were woken up around 2 am on June 2, by newspaper vendors bringing the morning edition bearing the sensational headlines. A dozen of us midshipmen from the aircraft carrier, H.M.S. Indomitable, had made our way to London from Portsmouth the previous day and parked ourselves for the night to get a ringside view of the coronation procession from Buckingham Palace. The pomp and circumstance of the days of the Empire hadn’t quite been forgotten and the pageantry was incredible. Commonwealth heads of state— among them India’s Jawarharlal Nehru and Pakistan’s Khwaja Nazimuddin—were provided with carriages.

But even amidst this old-fashioned display of regal privilege, it was the shock and awe of the Everest conquest that really captured our imagination.