"When I reached the top of Everest, I found my father. He was waiting for me."

Barcelona"When I climbed Everest, I felt close to my father," says mountaineer Jamling Tenzing Norgay (Darjeeling, India, 1965). A man who introduces himself as a Sherpa, he is aware that he still has to explain many times that a Sherpa is not someone who helps climbers reach summits by carrying their gear on their backs. The Sherpas are a people who have lived for centuries in the shadow of the highest peaks on the planet. A people who historically didn't want to climb the peaks because the deities lived there. But everything changed when the Westerners arrived. "Our relationship with the mountains is different, but the arrival of Western climbers changed everything. Now we live off it. In my family, there are now twelve of us who have reached the top of Everest," explains Jamling. The first was his father, the legendary Tenzing Norgay, the man who accompanied New Zealander Edmund Hillary when, in 1953, they became the first to summit the highest mountain on the planet.

For decades, the name of Jamling's father was almost hidden. He was a supporting actor, a footnote. Hillary wasn't to blame, as he always remembered that two people had reached the summit. But the palaces and newsrooms of London weren't interested in that Sherpa. The glory went to Hillary. Perhaps that's why Jamling, Tenzing Norgay, wanted to write. "More search for my father", the book that has just been published in Spanish translation by the publishing house Captain SwingA book with a foreword by the Dalai Lama and an introduction by American mountaineer and journalist Jon Krakauer, a member of the tragic 1996 expedition in which eight people lost their lives. The voice of the Tibetan Buddhist religious leader accompanies Jamling's point of view, and with Krakauer's voice, they complete the picture of how a sacred mountain has become a business, with the rich lining up to be taken by any means necessary to the world's highest peak. "Climbing Everest has always been an extremely dangerous mission, and the number of Sherpa lives lost has been disproportionately high from the outset, largely because the non-Sherpa climbers responsible for hiring them routinely subjected their Sherpa employees to significantly greater risks than they themselves assumed. However, this is from only one Sherpa's point of view. The other, published thirty-seven years ago, has long been out of print and is now difficult to find."

As is often the case, the planet's history has come down to us thanks to Western chroniclers. Many have spoken and befriended Sherpas. But reading the story directly from someone born in the area isn't usually the case. Jamling tells us about the lives of the Sherpas but also about his own ghosts, since it hasn't been easy being the son of a legend. If Hillary was famous around the world, his father became a legend among the Sherpas. "My father wasn't always there because he was invited to give talks and go on expeditions. And I was a boarding school student. He always wanted me to continue studying, and if I asked him about Everest, he'd say you couldn't see the whole world from the top. He didn't want me to be a climber, but my karma was to follow in his footsteps," he recalls. Jamling has no doubt that his destiny was written in another life and was to reach summits, always "with respect." Respect for the environment, the people, the culture. In recent years, many people have a lack of respect: they leave trash, they don't respect their fellow expedition members, it's sad," he says. A view opposed to that of the Sherpas, a people who, living high in the Himalayas, are well prepared for these expeditions. In fact, when in 1953 Hillary spoke wonders of Tenz. Nonsense. "We had never had any interest in climbing these mountains. It was only when the British and foreign expeditions arrived that the Sherpas got involved in climbing because it's a way of life for them. We don't do it for pleasure, we do it because we need a salary. Remember that most of the mountain is sacred to us. For example, Everest, we called it"Chomolungma", which is the mother of the world. And"Miyolangsangma"She's the deity who resides on Everest, so we always pray to her," he explains.

Tenzing Norgay, who moved to India, meaning his son has dual Nepalese and Indian nationality, explained: "I climbed Everest so my children wouldn't have to." But he was wrong. The father and Hillary's achievement attracted more and more people willing to risk their lives to climb Everest, creating more work for Sherpas destined to make the same journey. "There aren't many job opportunities and the salaries are good; it's hard to break the cycle," says Jamling, who owns a mountaineering school and a company that organizes climbs, trying to make them sustainable.

In 1996, the IMAX film company asked Jamling to lead an expedition to film the likes of Mount Everest, a film intended for theatrical release. And the son found himself following in his father's footsteps. Jamling, Tenzing Norgay, led that team along with director David Breashears. expedition where the Catalan Araceli Segarra was, who would become the first Spanish woman to summit Everest in that rope team, and who would crown the peak with a flag. "I cried when I reached the summit. And I felt my father's presence, thinking about what was going through his mind and how those people climbed 50 years ago with the equipment they had. It was in that moment that I truly learned to respect my father, Hillary, and all these climbers... the pioneers of mountaineering before our time," her father atop Everest. "I looked at the ruins of the monastery at the end of the Rongbuk Glacier, then I looked at the high grasses of the Kharta Valley in Tibet, where my father used to chase yaques as a boy. Then I turned and saw him. My father, behind me, beside a bare rock of ice. 1953, had taken off his oxygen mask and pushed up his glasses.

The son had managed to connect with his father, who died in 1986. The father is said to have told him: "You shouldn't have come so far, you shouldn't have to climb this mountain to talk to me." But the son was happy to have done so, especially when his uncle Tenzing Lotay, who has also reached the highest peak on the planet, confessed that his father was suffering inside: on the one hand, he didn't want to see his son risking his life, but at the same time, he was excited that he too would be able to climb Everest. He never told him this in person, but he thought it.

Jamling Tenzing Norgay wasn't even born when his father left religious offerings and a small blue and red pencil from his daughter Nima in 1953. But Tenzing Norgay wanted to reach the summit again in 2003, accompanied by Edmund's son, Peter. The two sons decided to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their parents' achievement with a joint ascent, imitating the photograph Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary had taken of each other. Each praying to their gods and pursuing their dreams.