A century of sporting ties: How mountaineering took New Zealand and India to new heights

The connection between New Zealand climbers and India began even before Everest.

In 1951, a group of New Zealand mountaineers – Earle Riddiford, Ed Cotter, George Lowe and Hillary – travelled to the Garhwal Himalaya in northern India.

Having developed their climbing skills in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, they were looking for a new challenge on a much larger scale.

With logistical support from India’s Himalayan Club, the team climbed Mukut Parbat. Riddiford and Cotter, alongside Pasang Dawa Lama, reached the summit.

Edmund Percival Hillary circa 1953 (Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library)

Sir Edmund Hillary’s son Peter, himself a highly accomplished mountaineer having twice summited Everest, recalls that the group had developed their skills to a high level in New Zealand and were eager to find their next challenge.

“So they started thinking about where they could go and what they could do and obviously the Himalayas stands there as one of the ultimate [adventures] … but they had no idea about the Everest expedition.”

In the 1950s Nepal opened its borders, prompting discussion around whether there was access from the south side to Everest.

British explorer Eric Shipton was putting together a reconnaissance expedition to see whether that route was viable. He invited two New Zealanders from the group that had scaled Mukut Parat to join his venture.

After much debate it was decided Hillary and Riddiford would join the expedition.

“So Dad went and joined Eric Shipton’s reconnaissance up into the Solukumbhu on the south side of Mount Everest.

"They climbed the Kumbhu Icefall, ascended high onto a peak called Pumori and looked into the fabled Western Kumbhu of Mount Everest and they could see that the southern route was potentially doable and that was the beginning of their efforts from the south side.”

Stephen Hewson: "For New Zealand, Hillary’s triumph instantly elevated the country’s international reputation." (Photo: Wiki Commons; author Gozitano)

The 1953 Everest expedition led by John Hunt was officially a British venture, but its success resonated across the Commonwealth.

When news of the ascent reached London on the eve of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the achievement quickly became a symbol of shared endeavour among Commonwealth nations.

For New Zealand, Hillary’s triumph instantly elevated the country’s international reputation. Yet the achievement also held deep significance across South Asia.

Tenzing Norgay, who had long been associated with mountaineering operations centred in Darjeeling, was widely celebrated in India. The hill town – then the epicentre of Himalayan climbing – became a focal point of international mountaineering culture.

“There’s this delightful story of the whole British Expedition coming down to Delhi [after completing the 1953 climb] and meeting Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, and Tenzing sharing with Nehru that he’d been invited to fly with the team to London.”

“But he had a couple of problems – one, he didn’t have a passport, and two, he didn’t have appropriate suits or clothes to wear. Apparently, Nehru said, ‘I can solve both of those right away. Tomorrow morning you will have an Indian passport’.”

“He then took Tenzing to his dressing room and told him to select a couple of his fabled famous ‘Nehru suits’ and that’s what Tenzing took to London and to Europe for that 1953 celebration.”

Stephen Hewson: "Unlike many explorers who moved on from their great achievement, Hillary returned to the Himalayas again and again." (Photo: Himalayan Trust)

India embraced Norgay as a national hero and soon afterwards he became director of field training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, established in 1954. Hillary also became revered in India and his relationship with the country changed forever.

While the story of Everest tends to focus on the summit itself, Hillary’s true legacy arguably lies in what he did afterward. Unlike many explorers who moved on from their great achievement, Hillary returned to the Himalayas again and again.

Through the Himalayan Trust – the charitable organisation he founded in 1960 – Hillary devoted much of his life to improving education, healthcare and infrastructure for communities across the region.

Although much of this work was centred in Nepal, its impact was felt across the wider Himalayan region that includes northern India. The Trust built schools, hospitals and airstrips, helping to transform remote mountain communities.

A statue of Sir Edmund Hillary at Khumjung Secondary School (Hillary School) in Khumjung, Nepal, built in 1961 (Photo: Wiki Commons; author: Dario Severi)

Indian climbers, mountaineering students and expedition leaders regularly encountered Hillary during these decades. His presence in the region made him a familiar and respected figure throughout the Himalayan world.

“I like to think that I am a very ordinary New Zealander. Not terribly bright, perhaps, but determined and practical in what I do,” said Hillary.

It was also during this period that the influence of Hillary and Norgay’s 1953 feat began to have a visible impact on Indian mountaineers.

Expeditions into the Indian Himalayas were increasingly organised through institutions such as the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and the Indian Mountaineering Foundation.

For Indian climbers beginning their own Himalayan journeys in the 1950s and 1960s, the ascent provided both inspiration and a blueprint.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay above a Solukhumbu village (Photo: Himalayan Trust)

Then, in 1977, Hillary, along with his son Peter, undertook one of the most unusual expeditions of his career: a jet-boat journey up the Ganges River called ‘Ocean to the Sky’. The expedition began at the mouth of the Ganges in the Bay of Bengal and travelled upstream thousands of kilometres traversing West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand towards the Himalayas, symbolically linking India’s great river with the world’s highest mountain.

The expedition captured the imagination of many Indians, reinforcing Hillary’s reputation. Local enthusiasm was immense, with millions of people flocking to see the group, all sponsored by the Indian government.

In a 1978 interview on TV One’s the Good Day programme, Hillary said while the journey itself was very exciting “it was really our association with the people of the river that was so tremendously important to us”.

He continued, “I mean, the warmth that we got from the people living along the banks, we really came to be accepted as people doing a religious pilgrimage up the Ganga, even though we are not particularly religious people.”

“We absorbed the philosophy of the people and we enjoyed and revelled, really, in the warmth that came from them.”

Peter Hillary adds, “My father and I, we’ve both said that in many ways it was the most marvellous expedition of the lot.”

“It had everything and the warmth and generosity of Indian people, whether it was in Bengal or Bihar or Punjab or up in the Himalayas, was just astounding. As we drove the jetboats through Calcutta, we waved to crowds along the banks of the river that we estimated would have exceeded the population of New Zealand at the time, which was three million people.”

“Every couple of days we would refuel the jet boats, refill a few jerrycans and an Indian oil tanker would come down to some little village at an agreed refuelling site and people would show up.”

Stamps depicting Mount Everest in celebration of the 15th anniversary of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (Photo: Wiki Commons)

While the local Indians wanted to see the “miraculous new jet boats and the conqueror of Mount Everest – Edmund Hillary”, there was more to it than simply the adventure, says Peter Hillary. “For Hindus there’s a wish that they could go on a pilgrimage, called Darshan, and walk the length of the Ganges River and visit the shrines along this holy river.”

“Most people will never be able to do it, but to be in the company of people who are making the journey provides great merit and so people turned out in numbers ... we commonly would have two or three hundred thousand people crowding down to the refuelling site and the energy and the excitement was absolutely magical.”

“I remember stopping on the Gangetic Plains fairly late one evening at a little village, it was like a time warp with great Brahmin cows wandering around, fields of rice and barley and other grains and these mud-rendered, very simple houses. It was so serene and they’d invite us in and make room for our tents.

Just the generosity of the people and the connection we had with them. It was an astounding opportunity.”

That expedition was cathartic for both father and son.

Two years earlier while en route to join Hillary in the village of Phaphlu, Nepal, where he was helping to build a hospital, Sir Edmund’s wife Louise and daughter Belinda were killed in a plane crash near Kathmandu Airport shortly after take-off.

“It was a very challenging and confronting time for Dad, my sister Sarah and me. But the ‘Ocean to Sky’ was an amazing cathartic sort of trip in some respects.”

“Of course it doesn’t take away the searing pain of loss, but it does help with learning to live with it and carry on. I’d have to thank the people of India for the warm welcome, the friendship and just reaching out to us [during that expedition]. It gives you a feeling of confidence in humanity and life.”

“We also had the wonderful company of the people on the expedition. There were Indian members, there were Sherpa members from Nepal and there were people from New Zealand and Australia. The camaraderie we shared was absolutely exceptional.”

Climber Mohan Kohli (far left) with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in Delhi in 2015 during the launch of the book "The Great Himalayan Climb" on the occasion of the golden jubilee of the 1965 Everest Expedition (Photo: Wiki Commons; author: Indian Prime Minister's Office)

Among that group were captain Mohan Kohli who had led a successful Indian Mount Everest expedition in 1965, which put nine people on the summit – a record at the time. Others in the party included New Zealand climbers Graeme Dingle, Murray Jones and Mike Gill.

The mission faced extreme rapids and wildlife, and, high in the Himalayas, Sir Edmund nearly died of altitude-induced cerebral oedema.

“There were quite a few scary moments. I mean even in the jet boats … in those huge waters of the upper Ganges tributaries it was very dangerous and we got very close to getting swamped on several occasions.”

“Then we trekked up to a shrine at Badrinath and attempted to climb a beautiful peak called Karcha Parbat … sadly Dad developed altitude sickness. It’s quite ironic really after being so strong in the successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953. He got very sick and we had to wrap him up in his sleeping bag and a collapsed tent and sled him down the glacier to a lower elevation.”

“It’s extraordinary when you get someone down – six, seven, eight hundred metres just how much they will recover if you do it in time and that’s what happened to Dad,” said Peter Hillary.

“We got him down and a can of Wattie’s peaches was pressed into Dad’s hands and he started really enjoying eating the peaches and slurping down the syrup and when he did that we all knew he was on his way back and we were hugely relieved.”

Sir Edmund was then airlifted out by the Indian Airforce.

Between 1985 and 1989 Sir Edmund’s relationship with India took on a much more formal role, when he became high commissioner to India.

Hillary’s appointment marked the re-opening of the New Zealand mission which then-prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon had closed in 1982 after falling out with the Indian government in the wake of New Zealand’s sporting ties with South Africa.

Sports historian Dr Geoff Watson from Massey University says that Hillary played a crucial role in re-establishing ties between New Zealand and India.

“There was a sort of a shared sense that Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were seen as both being people of empire ‘who’d made good.’”

Watson explains, “To have Edmund Hillary going to India as the ambassador sent a very important signal that New Zealand took the relationship seriously.”

Dr Geoff Watson: "To have Edmund Hillary going to India as the ambassador sent a very important signal that New Zealand took the relationship seriously."

As high commissioner, Hillary hosted and met Indian dignitaries and was instrumental in Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi visiting New Zealand in 1986.

India’s respect for Hillary was further underlined in 1997, when Hillary returned to India to unveil a statue of himself at Darjeeling’s Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, alongside Tenzing Norgay’s son, Jamling Tenzing Norgay.

In recent decades New Zealanders have continued to climb Indian peaks. In 2022, Matthew Scholes, Kim Ladiges and Daniel Joll of the New Zealand Alpine team climbed Garhwal’s Changabang West Face for the first time in 46 years.

Likewise, Indian climbers come to New Zealand to train and climb in the Southern Alps.

In 2010, New Zealand launched the Sir Edmund Hillary Fellowship aiming to build on New Zealand-India links.

Rahul Gandhi (great-grandson of Nehru) was the inaugural Hillary Fellow and travelled to New Zealand that year, with then New Zealand prime minister John Key saying: “India is a priority relationship for New Zealand. Its leading position in the region and internationally, and its economic significance, make it strategically important to New Zealand.”

Mountaineering may not have been the most visible sporting connection between New Zealand and India over recent decades, but it has certainly been one of the most enduring – and quietly transformative.

Stephen Hewson: "...the political and emotional geography of [Hillary and Tenzing's] achievement bonded New Zealand and India." (Photo: Wiki Commons; author: Horowhenua Historical Society Inc.)

When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood atop Mount Everest, the summit itself may have lain beyond India’s borders, but the political and emotional geography of the achievement bonded New Zealand and India.

Norgay, long associated with Darjeeling, was celebrated as a hero in India, and Hillary’s success was seen not as a distant foreign triumph, but rather embraced as a source of shared pride across the Himalayan world.

In the years that followed, India became a crucial gateway for Himalayan expeditions, and New Zealand climbers increasingly engaged with Indian institutions. But Hillary’s legacy in India, and in the broader region, reshaped how New Zealand was perceived abroad.

At a national level, mountaineering helped to open informal diplomatic channels during a formative period in India-New Zealand relations – India was still defining its place in the world following its independence in 1947, while New Zealand was beginning to assert a more independent foreign policy.

Exchanges between alpine clubs, survey teams and expedition groups created people-to- people links that often preceded formal governmental engagement.

While mountaineering may lack the visibility of a packed stadium of cricket or hockey fans, it sits alongside them and other sports as part of the broader tapestry of India-New Zealand ties.

Its impact is also arguably deeper. It has connected the two nations not through rivalry and competition, but through shared challenge and cooperation.

A Century of sporting ties

This article is the third in a four-part series looking at New Zealand's sporting ties with India. The first two articles focus on hockey and cricket:

• A century of sporting ties: The 1926 hockey tour that began it all

• A century of sporting ties: How cricket transformed New Zealand and India into more than rivals