Hello and welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me Louise Clark.

Today, we're going back to May 1953, when Tenzing Norge, a surfer from Nepal, became one of the first humans to stand on top of the highest mountain in the world, Everest.

My father, he was an extraordinary man. He was a very simple, humble man.

Tenzing was a surfer. He belonged to the people and the land around the Himalayas.

There are conflicting accounts as to whether he was born in Nepal or Tibet.

What we do know, he lived his life in the shadow of Everest, which is referred to locally as Chumalongma.

He was part of the 9th British expedition that made the historic ascent.

70 years on from that incredible moment, his son, Jamlin Tenzing Norge, recalls what that success meant to his father.

I've talked to him on several occasions about his summit and how he felt.

And I've listened to him, my father also, on many occasions, when he's talked to other people about his feeling of being on the top.

And he basically said, I felt happy. He was very simple. He said, I felt happy, you know, and that was it.

And one of the first things he did was put his hands together and prayed to Chumalongma, the Mother Goddess, and said,

Tujichaya Chumalongma, which means thank you, Mother Goddess.

Tenzing was familiar with Everest. He was chosen as a member of the team of Sherpaporters for the 1933 British expedition

and made more attempts on the mountain in the pre-war years.

After the Second World War, he was again, out of several other teams in the Himalayas.

He had tried to climb this mountain six times earlier, over a period of almost 21 years.

The attempt one year before with the Swiss, he had reached almost 400 meters from the summit and had to turn back.

He always felt that, you know, this is a mountain that he had to climb.

It was something even more deeper in our beliefs, the Sherpap believes in Buddhism.

He had a calling for this mountain. It was a special mountain for him that he had to climb.

With his experience, it was no surprise that Tenzing, then 38 years old, was chosen to be part of the British Everest team in 1953.

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