Nawang Gombu

Nawang Gombu was a Sherpa mountaineer, born on 1 May 1936 in the Kharta region of Tibet and later an Indian citizen, who was the first man to climb Mount Everest twice. He was the nephew of Tenzing Norgay, fled a monastery as a boy to reach Khumbu, and was sent by the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling on a technical climbing course in Switzerland. He reached the summit of Everest with Jim Whittaker on the 1963 American expedition and again with the 1965 Indian expedition, a record that stood for fifteen years, and in 1964 he was the first Indian to summit Nanda Devi. He later guided on Mount Rainier, retired as an adviser at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, and received the Arjuna Award and the Padma Bhushan.