Birat Anupam shares the story of the last surviving member of the Everest 1953 expedition, Kanchha Sherpa of Namche Bazaar, Nepal. 

Babies born on the day of the historic Everest ascent of May 29 1953 are now septuagenarians. The first men to summit the highest mountain on the planet - Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary - have long passed away. In the 71-year-old history of the first Everest ascent, hundreds of thousands of books, articles and documents detail the legacy of their climb. Just one living legacy of that fateful day remains: 91-year-old Kanchha Sherpa, the only surviving member of the 1953 Everest expedition, who carried climbing gear and other essentials for the British expedition led by John Hunt. 

Kanchha's biography is titled 'Tough & Cheerful'. Patricia Moon was approached for the project by Kanchha's extended family 'while ascending a particularly steep stretch of trail in Langtang region of the Himalaya in fall of 2018.' The biography not only tells Kanchha's story, but also the contemporary history of the Khumbu region of Nepal and the transnational Sherpa corridor of Tibet, Nepal and India as seen from Kanchha's perspective. 

He speaks both Nepali and English, but feels more expressive speaking in Sherpa, his mother tongue. Moon spent time with Kanchha and came to understand his body language and emotions. The transcript of his interview was translated from Sherpa to English by Pemba Sherpa. 

Kanchha is not his only name. The world does not know much about Namgyal Wangdi. However, this person is famous by another name: Tenzing Norgay. The same is true for Kanchha. His given name by Lama of Namche Bazaar was Ang Phurba. However, he chose to go by 'Kanchha', the name chosen by his mother. 

Kanchha is the grandson of the first inhabitants of Namche. In the early 1900s, a monk named Jamde Kusang arrived in Namche from Thame. A forest rich in water resources encouraged him to choose this place as his home. Accompanying him was Ang Phuri, Kanchha's grandfather. He sourced potatoes from Thame and collected tubers, leaves, nettles, among other nourishment from the surrounding forest to survive and start a family.

Kanchha doesn't know his exact birthday. He was born in 1933 - a fact only realised later in life once it was understood that he was born in the Year of Rooster in the Tibetan Zodiac calendar. 

Before his active mountaineering career, Kancha worked in international trade. He carried sugar from India and traded it for salt in Tibet. The entire journey took just 12 days. Kanchha's first assignment was to carry 30 kilos of paper from Kharikhola of Solukhumbu to Tibet to make prayer wheels. He travelled via Nagpa La Pass (19049 feet), the Nepal-China border crossing. While passing through the town of Jayanagar in India, Kanchha discovered the lucrative market for the Himalayan Sheepdog known as 'Bhote Kukur'. He started selling surplus dogs from his family and village for 8 rupees each - money equivalent to what he would later receive on his high-altitude Sherpa job in the first Everest expedition. It would take him around eight days on foot to reach Jayanagar from Namche. 

In the winter of 1952, Kanchha left home and walked to Darjeeling over five days in the hope of gaining employment from Tenzing Norgay, who had become well-known as a strong and high-earning mountain guide for Westerners. Norgay - who knew Kanchha's father - paid him to do chores and eventually offered him his first mountaineering job as a porter for the 1953 expedition. 

During the expedition, Kanchha reached the South Col. He helped fix ropes and carry loads for the British team. Kanchha, like his fellow Sherpa friends, climbed without bottled oxygen. Kanchha says: 'Tsampa (the buckwheat mash) was my oxygen!' 

Kanchha had difficulty breathing, but he soon forgot this hardship while taking in his surroundings. Describing his moments at the South Col, he says: 'I walked around and looked at everything. It was incredible! I looked down and saw so many glaciers! I could see Tibet and the Rongbuk glacier.' Reaching the top was not his dream, as he was simply doing his job. Instead, once his job was done, he wanted to return home. 'I couldn't see Namche, but I saw other familiar things, like Kongde Peak near my home. I had a lot of desire to come down and be with my friends and family.' 

While Kanchha was at camp two, he and his fellow Sherpa heard the news of the historic summit following the arrival of Tenzing and Hillary. He describes the scene: 'Everyone was so happy. We were hugging and kissing each other. I was so happy. I couldn't believe any of this.' 

'Tough & cheerful' - the title of Patricia Moon's biography - was a description given to the team by expedition leader Sir John Hunt in his book titled 'The Ascent of Everest'. 

In 1956, Kanchha married Ang Lhakpa at the age of 23. Three years later in 1959, Kanchha and his brother came into trouble. The Dalai Lama had fled Potala Palace and escaped to India. There were protests in Tibet. Chinese forces made multiple arrests. Among those arrested were Kanchha and his brother. Kanchha's Nepalese passport set him free from jail after a week. However, his brother remained incarcerated for four months because he didn't have a Nepalese passport.

In the 1970s, Kanchha sold Swiss watches to Chinese soldiers. He would collect watches from Kolkata and sell them to the Chinese soldiers stationed in Tibet. It was not an easy task - nor was it legal. To overcome this, he would hide watches inside cooking pots and make a huge margin from this trade. He describes those days in his book, saying: 'I would travel to Kolkata, India and buy Swiss watches at about 300 rupees each. And then I would walk back to Namche and on to Tibet to sell them for 3000 rupees each. Quite a profit! The Tibetans could never afford anything like this, so my customers were the Chinese military.' 

This illegal trade, however, did not last long. Once, he was arrested. In the biography, Kanchha says: 'Eventually the Chinese government found out and took all the watches that I have on me. Since this was illegal, they also arrested me and put in jail. I was there for ten or twelve days and after that I walked home.' 

Kanchha returned to Everest six times after his historic expedition as a high altitude Sherpa. He never summited the mountain. He did, however, climb Makalu and Annapurna III.

After the 1970 Everest accident in which eight Sherpa lost their lives, Kanchha's wife Ang Lhakpa encouraged him to change occupation. After retiring from mountaineering, he joined a trekking company named Mountain Travel Nepal for thirteen years, trekking around the Khumbu, Makalu, Manaslu, Mustang, Annapurna, among other peaks and valleys. The founder of Mountain Travel Nepal was British Colonel Jimmy Roberts.

Kanchha's home is decorated with medals awarded by Queen Elizabeth II following the 1953 ascent, which Edmund Hillary eventually brought to Namche from England. 

Kanchha credits both Hillary and Tenzing for improving the lives of people living in the Khumbu region. Kanchha says: 'Maybe they are heroes for the world, for the locals, they are gods.' Kanchha has used prayer beads and prayer wheels since the age of 50 at the suggestion of a monk in the Tengboche monastery. He prays every day. His prayer involves Tenzing and Hillary. He explains: 'I always pray for Tenzing and Hillary every morning because they brought prosperity to the Khumbu, to the Sherpas. Because of them the economy has boomed and everyone can get a job. Even a guy without a rupee can go to Lukla and get a job. He can earn 4000 or 5000 rupees a day ($40 or $50) easily. The people from this region used to have no food, no sanitation, no education. Now it's totally different. People from the Khumbu are smart now because they are educated and learn from the foreigners. All because of Tenzing and Hillary!' 

Unlike other star climbers of his generation from the Khumbu region such Tenzing Norgay, Ang Tharkay and many new-generation climbers, Kanchha has not left his ancestral home of Namche. His family runs Nirvana Lodge Hotel, offering catering and hospitality services to climbers and trekkers. Despite being part of this Everest economy, Kanchha believes that activity on the mountain should cease. In his biography, Kanchha says: 'I think that Everest needs a rest for a few seasons. And maybe this will make a better value for Everest!' 

He is concerned about Everest not only in environmental terms but also for cultural reasons. For Kanchha and his Sherpa community, Everest is known as Chomolungma, the 'Mother Goddess of the Mountains'. He says: 'Everest is a god, that's why the team does a puja before they climb it. They are asking forgiveness for climbing Everest. The gods from this region are not so happy. The foreigners have made this place very nasty because they bring in all these types of meat, smoking and trash. Khumbu is one of the most pure places, where gods live, but now they are not so happy.' 

Kanchha is also concerned about the problematic snowfall patterns in his region. He says: 'Before, whenever we got snow in Namche, it would take four or five months to melt that snow eventually. But now we rarely even get snow.' 

Rising temperatures due to global warming are also contributing to glacial lake outburst floods that devastate mountain communities in the Hindu Kush Himalya region - such as the one that engulfed the village of Thame, Nepal on 16 August.

In 2017, Kanchha launched the Kanchha Sherpa Foundation with the objectives of helping to provide educational support to poor children in Nepal and humanitarian aid in the event of natural disasters. 

Today, Kanchha's grandson Tenzing Chogyal Sherpa continues his grandfather's legacy in his work as a glaciologist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), studying ice loss on Everest and across the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region.

'My grandfather is the past of the Everest region,' he says. 'And I plan to be the future and continue his legacy in preserving Sherpa culture, the environment and its people.' 

Read more about Kanchha's life on the Kanchha Sherpa Foundation website.