RIP, Hillary

no...not Hillary Clinton, though some people were ready to write her campaign off some days back...(until this happened!)

no....its the beekeeper who gave up beekeeping because he got too busy.. :)

Edmund Hillary is dead at age 88

Interesting trivia about a full life, well led: (highlighted below are some things about him and his escapades that I did not know)

Hillary's life was marked by grand achievements, high adventure, discovery, excitement — yet he was humble to the point that he only admitted being the first man atop Everest long after the death of climbing companion Tenzing Norgay.

He had pride in his feat, yet he irreverently referred to it as he returned to base camp as the man who took the first step onto the top of the world's highest peak: "We knocked the bastard off."

The accomplishment as part of a British climbing expedition even added luster to the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II four days later, and she knighted Hillary as one of her first act.

But he was more proud of his decades-long campaign to set up schools and health clinics in Nepal, the homeland of Tenzing Norgay, the mountain guide with whom he stood arm in arm on the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953.

He wrote of the pair's final steps to the top of the world: ``Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest.

``Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation - these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed,'' Hillary noted.

``But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn't believe it.

He said: ``I removed my oxygen mask to take some pictures. It wasn't enough just to get to the top. We had to get back with the evidence. Fifteen minutes later we began the descent.''

...

In his 1999 book ``View from the Summit,'' Hillary finally broke his long public silence about whether it was he or Norgay who was the first man to step atop Everest. ``We drew closer together as Tenzing brought in the slack on the rope. I continued cutting a line of steps upwards. Next moment I had moved onto a flattish exposed area of snow with nothing by space in every direction,'' Hillary wrote. ``Tenzing quickly joined me and we looked round in wonder. To our immense satisfaction we realized with had reached the top of the world.'' Before Norgay's death in 1986, Hillary consistently refused to confirm he was first, saying he and the Sherpa had climbed as a team to the top.

Known as ``burra sahib'' - ``big man,'' for his 6 feet 2 inches - by the Nepalese, Hillary funded and helped build hospitals, health clinics, airfields and schools. He raised funds for higher education for Sherpa families, and helped set up reforestation programs in the impoverished country. About $250,000 a year was raised by the charity for projects in Nepal. A strong conservationist, he demanded that international mountaineers clean up thousands of tons of discarded oxygen bottles, food containers and other climbing debris that litter the lower slopes of Everest.

His commitment to Nepal took him back more than 120 times.It was on a visit to Nepal that his first wife, Louise, 43, and 16-year-old daughter Belinda died in a light plane crash March 31, 1975. Hillary remarried in 1990, to June Mulgrew, former wife of adventurer colleague and close friend Peter Mulgrew, who died in a passenger plane crash in the Antarctic.

I remember he was high commissioner to India and was in Delhi in the 1980s but I did not know about this bit about him introducing jetboats on the Ganges!

Named New Zealand's ambassador to India in the mid-1980s, Hillary was the celebrity of the New Delhi cocktail circuit. He later said he found the job confining. He introduced jetboats to many Ganges River dwellers a decade earlier, in 1977, when his ``Ocean to the Sky'' expedition traveled the Ganges by jetboat to within 130 miles of its source.

A great and good man....and I do not say that just because of his achievements, his humility but also his conservation efforts. Seems like a real genuine person - someone who cared and who acted upon it to make a difference - a rarity these days.

RIP, "burra sahib". An inspiring and fulfilling life well led!