Great read, great story...

Great read, great story...

Jamling Tenzing Norgay writes a fascinating book about his life and the challenge of following in his father's footsteps...all the way to the top of Mt. Everest.

The best communication that this book accomplishes is in providing an insight and deep, personal look into the lives of Sherpas and their faith, and the developments of causes and effects relevant to the growth in climbing expeditions to their culture and society.

Also this book illustrates that the primal motivations inherent in the desire to risk life and limb to climb precipitous peaks and crags has a wide range of spiritual connotations and is perhaps more culturally specific than usually thought.

All of these climbers have their own personal motivations for being up there, the Sherpas themselves are more closely connected perhaps spiritually, as well as professionally.

Recommended alternative readings, particularly, "Into Thin Air" are relevant for the context of the 1996 disaster. "K-2: the Savage Mountain" also would provide a good discussion of ill-prepared and ill-planned climbing expeditions and the tragic results. "Lost on Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine " also provides more details into earlier expeditions prior to Tenzing Norgay's first ascent with Edmund Hillary.

Finally, the open debate and kerfuffle over who exactly placed the first step on the summit (Tenzing or Edmund) made for an interesting discussion of a controversial issue which was new information to me, as well as the debate over whether Tenzing Norgay was representing Nepal, or India on his climb.

These were interesting pieces of new information to add to a fascinating puzzle of overlapping information about Everest which Jamling Tenzing Norgay has well provided. However I will have to read the credits again to establish what exactly the "ghost-writer" may have written...