Ang Tharkay

Ang Tharkay (1907 – 28 July 1981) was a renowned Nepalese Sherpa mountain climber and explorer who acted as a guide and later sirdar for many Himalayan expeditions. He was "beyond question the outstanding Sherpa of his era" and he introduced Tenzing Norgay to the world of mountaineering.

Personal life Ang Tharkay (his name is also often written Angtharkay or Angtarkay) was born in 1907 to a poor family in Kunde, just north of Namche Bazaar in the Solukhumbu district of Nepal, near Mount Everest. Hoping to make a living as a mountaineering porter, like many ambitious boys of his era living near Everest, at the age of twelve he migrated to Darjeeling in India which was where many expeditions selected Sherpa guides and porters.

He was married to Ang Yangjin and they had a daughter and four sons. He was well-built though only about tall. In 1954 the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling sent him to Switzerland on a technical climbing course. In 1954 he set up his own trekking business in Darjeeling (although he was independently advertising his services for visits to Sikkim and Tibet as early as 1946) and published his autobiography Mémoires d'un Sherpa (in French) – he was the first mountaineering Sherpa to write a book. Also that year Ang Tharkay was in the party supporting Reginald Cooke's solo ascent of Kabru. Cooke later said that because he found him to be the most reliable of the Sherpas he "stupidly left him in charge of Base Camp and did not take him to the summit". Ang Tharkay was sirdar in 1937 for Shipton's five-month survey of of Karakoram territory north of K2 and again on the 1938 Everest expedition. In his 1954 memoirs he made particular mention that he was treated with friendship and equality by the French climbers. He was awarded the Légion d'honneur – the first Sherpa to receive a European honour.

On Shipton's British Everest reconnaissance in 1951 the party had entered Tibet, which they knew was not permitted, but they hoped they would not be noticed. However, things went wrong and they were apprehended by an armed militia. There was shouting on both sides for ten minutes until Ang Tharkay, who was sirdar, asked the Europeans to move away. There followed twenty minutes of further loud argument after which he came back to the sahibs, grinning – they were to be released for payment of seven rupees which Ang Tharkay had been arguing down from ten. Shipton had been worrying because he only had 1200 rupees to purchase their freedom. This made him the oldest person to climb to eight thousand metres.