THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT JAMLING, THE SHERPA WHO UNDERSTOOD HIS FATHER AT THE TOP OF EVEREST: "TAKING A DUMP AT 8,000 METERS IS COLD AND DANGEROUS"

JUAN DIEGO MADUEÑO

The son of the first sherpa to reach the summit recalls in a book his ascent to the mountain. The expedition coincided with the death of eight climbers in 1996

A stomach ache almost prevented sherpa Jamling Tenzing Norgay from reaching the summit of Everest. It was night. In 1996, two months after starting the IMAX expedition he was part of -a team of porters, mountaineers, including the Spanish Araceli Segarra, and sherpas carried a camera and several kilos of film to the mountain to film the route- he had surpassed 8,000 meters in the final attempt. The stomach issue had Jamling trapped. "It's part of human nature. 

Taking a dump at 8,000 meters is dangerous and very cold. You have to do it very quickly. If you are exposed for one or two minutes, you can have a frostbite problem. Diarrhea can make you turn back. If I hadn't made that decision, I would have returned to base camp. There is no appropriate place to take a dump in the middle of an Everest ascent; doing it frees you. As soon as I finished, I thought, 'Well, now I'm ready to climb,'" recalls Jamling from his home in India.

Through the Zoom open window in his living room, you can see the figure of his father, Tenzing Norgay, the first sherpa to reach the summit.

 "It's a painting representing my father at Chukung Ri [the Everest base camp, at 5,500 meters altitude], in 1953, before starting the ascent". His father supported the New Zealand mountaineer 

Sir Edmund Hillary during the British expedition that aimed to be the first to summit Everest. 

The two previous attempts by the queen's subjects had failed. Hillary and Tenzing succeeded. "At the summit, there is enough space for five people, holding hands, to climb at once. It's not a place where there's a line to cross and say 'I arrived first.' The summit is not a peak, so to speak. It's like this," he gestures to indicate the existence of something like a platform. "All this area is the summit," drawing a circle on the back of his hand.

Hillary and his father arrived together. The feat improved Jamling's life. He gained access to private education at Saint Paul's, an elite school in India, and was able to study at Northland College in Wisconsin, USA. Despite his father's absence and the invocation of the mountain, that vertical deity that provides for the sherpas, Jamling was driven to follow in the pioneer's footsteps, facing the mysteries of fatherhood. "My father climbed so that we wouldn't have to. That's what he told me when I mentioned the possibility of joining an expedition. He didn't want us to suffer the danger of attempting it."

In 2001, he published Closer to My Father: A Sherpa's Journey to the Top of Everest, a guide, now published by Capital Swing, about the spiritual, family, economic, and physical dimensions of the highest mountain. Jamling wrote the whole truth about Everest with the aim of finding his father, with whom he didn't share as much time as he would have liked, and understanding the motivation that turned him into a legend.

"Of course, his absence is forgiven," he admits. "I mean, I realized at the time that everything he did was for us and not for himself. He wanted to give us a better life. He lived a wonderful life. He always enjoyed what he did. From climbing since he was very young to later joining many expeditions. He is one of the few people in the world who has extensively traveled the Himalayas. And at the end of his life, he was happy training a new generation of mountaineers," he comments.

"The Government of Nepal should limit the ascent to those who have climbed a 7,000-meter mountain"

He could feel his father's presence during the ascent. "It was a pilgrimage." As if he were following the trail of a Big Foot - a legend as close as it is elusive - he repeated the path that led his father in 1953 to the first ascent of Everest. "I met him at the summit. When I grew up, I didn't know him very well. It was a way to pay tribute to him because I didn't get to know him well. Since childhood, I spent nine months at school. 

And I always wondered what had led that man to climb this mountain. I realized he was an explorer, fond of being outdoors. From that day on, I became aware of the difficulty he had faced with the equipment they carried." In the book, he recounts the difference between the oxygen bottles used in 1953 and those of 1996: almost eight kilos of difference. "They went to meet the unknown. When we arrived, the route was already established. That's when I started to respect him much more."

Superstitions accompany Jamling at every step since he decided to join the IMAX adventure. He needed to consult with the lamas to see if he would have good luck on the ascent. If the days were favorable. If there would be any issues to address during the adventure. The visits he makes to Buddhist priests are like life tests of his ancestors. 

Western education had made him change his perspective, which seems to recalibrate throughout the Everest-fueled mania. All the rituals he participates in or the luck acclimatization maneuvers ultimately anchor him definitively to his origins. 

"Sherpas are connected to the mountain. We don't want to challenge it because we don't want to anger the mountain gods." Jamling is very clear about the tokens that propelled him to the top. Although, in the end, setting foot on the top of Everest is a matter of having good or bad weather.

 "During the journey, we pray for no avalanches. The gods keep us safe. As my father said after descending the mountain, you have to be grateful for good weather. It marks success. It's nature's way of saying it accompanies you."

Before suffering from diarrhea on the mountain, Jamling was concerned about "fecal impaction," a rather harsh way of referring to constipation. "I had heard terrible stories about the illness," he writes in Closer to My Father. "It is caused by dehydration and occurs among climbers confined to high altitudes. Nicotine has a laxative effect, so I thought smoking would be a useful preventive measure. I was trying to quit, but I secretly smoked a few cigarettes with Bijaya, our Nepalese liaison officer. We called it sherpa oxygen."

Sherpa oxygen no longer exists. "It's the opposite," he tells this newspaper. "Now you don't want to smoke during an ascent. It's the opposite of what you should do. At that time, I was very young. I had a lot of energy. It was all energy. So, you saw the sherpas who had grown up on the mountain, at 12,000 feet, smoking during the climb, and you smoked with them, but it's not something to consider. It's much better not to smoke. In those days, I drank, enjoyed life. I was only 30 years old. I was just starting to live."

Everest is not a seashell that howls. "What does it sound like? What do you mean? During the climb, you only feel peace. You are in tune with nature. You are focused on yourself, on where you should step, on putting your foot where you should. It's important not to make any mistakes. It requires a lot of concentration. A moment of rest allows you to observe the beauty around you. Feeling the air and the ice is a way to feel alive," clarifies Jamling.

In the practical part of the journey into his father's interior, through the Everest pass, he found an amusement park. "Well, it's not really an amusement park. It has become increasingly accessible. There are more and more mountaineers finding it very easy to climb the eight-thousanders. Now we know at what altitude we need oxygen, the ropes are fixed by the sherpas, who also take care of making food and setting up the tents. And, moreover, people are starting to use oxygen at lower and lower levels. It's becoming ridiculous."

In the IMAX expedition that Jamling participated in 1996, he coincided with a few guides and their clients. Some of the world's most prepared mountaineers were together on the slopes of Everest to take advantage of the opportunity that spring offered that year. 

They wanted to summit on May 9 and 10, but the mountain swallowed eight mountaineers. Jamling and his companions had to postpone the ascent. They participated in the rescue of the surviving mountaineers; confirmed the death of some friends. "I never fear death. I think about life when I'm there. 

The most important thing is to get negative thoughts out of your head. If you are afraid of the mountain, you will make a mistake. That tragedy taught nothing: it led to more and more mountaineers wanting to get closer to Everest. It didn't teach the world any lesson. Some years, 14 climbers have died. The mountain gained recognition in a perverse way: that year the best climbers in the world died."

"Some videos show the gentrification of the slopes of Everest." Human beings are capable of turning the highest mountain on their planet into Casa Salesas, the restaurant of Íñigo Onieva. One of the most popular sequences shows mountaineers queuing in what seems like a very dangerous gorge. They wait, as if waiting for a spot to open up at the Pollería de Malasaña, the establishment in the center of Madrid where they sell penis-shaped waffles, to take the next step.

"The Nepalese government is the only one that can stop this phenomenon. Recently, they proposed banning climbers who have not previously climbed at least a 7,000-meter mountain from climbing Everest. The measure would reduce the number of people attempting it. In addition, they want to increase the amount you must pay for the ascent by 15,000 euros," adds Jamling. "The commercialization we know today started in 2005.

At that time, inexperienced mountaineers began to arrive. And commercial operators only wanted money. They made more money by giving them oxygen as soon as possible. The more oxygen you consume, the more expensive the expedition becomes. So, this made it easier to climb the mountains," he explains the causes of the overcrowding of one of the most dangerous places on Earth. In the essay rescued by Capitán Swing, Jamling goes from the physical to the spiritual, from superstition to spiritualism.

"Some spirits roam the mountains and can end up in the mountaineers' backpacks." Near-death experiences are mixed with some visions that are inexplicable at sea level. Dying up there is another way to decorate the environment. "It's easy to die. Going down is as dangerous as going up. On the way back, you have no fuel left. You have no oxygen, no energy, you haven't slept, you haven't eaten, and you end up failing.

This is the explanation of why so many people die after reaching the highest point. I won't go back. There is no reason to return to Everest."

https://www.mundoamerica.com/entertainment/2025/06/25/685bb786e85ece5c6a8b4599.html