KAPAI: Long white cloud legend was an inspiration

For most Kiwi kids growing up in the second half of the last century, the challenge of climbing and conquering anything that resembled a hill or mountain was what you did to emulate a homegrown hero.
I can remember cutting my climbing teeth on Blake Park sand dunes and Mount Dury like most other young Mounties wanting to stand on a mountaintop and cry out to the world.
Then I progressed to the huge wood chip piles and stacks of Lumber Company logs on the Mount wharf, and finally catching the morning light on top of Mauao before claiming the scalp of Mt Ruapehu down the line in Tuwharetoa territory.
The seeds of climbing these challenging maunga were sown by the legend of the long white cloud himself, Sir Edmund Hillary, when he climbed to the roof of the world and knocked the bastard off.
The hill that Sir Ed climbed was Mt Everest, and together with his mate Sherpa Tenzing, they would become Kiwi legends for generations to come.
In John Crossman's geography classes at Mount College, I would dream about one day seeing the magic mountain for myself up there on the roof of the world, and I wouldn't rest until I saw Everest for myself.
So at the raw age of 20 years young, I threw in my plum job with a new company car, threw on a backpack and headed to the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal to see the magnificent mountain that Sir Ed had knocked off.
Nepal still sits as the most mystical of all the countries I have visited, and being a bit of a spiritual cowboy myself with a penchant for karmic consequences and expression-sessions, I immediately fell in love with this Asian oasis. Nepal has 28 million people tucked away in its Buddhist bosom, who all seem to live life like they are only temporarily visiting the planet.
Wisened Sherpa warriors walk on by with huge loads strapped to their bent backs and all the while there is the constant murmur of prayer coming from the deepest part of their being. The famously feared Gurkha soldiers who stood alongside the Maori Battalion as war winners come from Nepal and both seem to be driven by divine forces when fighting for their lives.
When I flew down into the Kathmandu Valley and landed at the airport, there had recently been a plane crash and Sir Ed's first wife Lady Louise Hillary and their daughter Belinda had been tragically killed.
Inbound from India I knew instantly I was in a land with strong Kiwi connections that was weirdly and yet wonderfully different. Ruled by the world's oldest ruling monarchy, it would only get weirder for me 10 years down the track when I would be in another part of the world working for the same ruling monarch, King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dee of Nepal and his royal entourage.
Sadly King Birendra and his regal wife would be brutally murdered by their son a decade or so later and the downward slide toward communist control would begin.
Soon after settling into the hypnotic rhythm of Kathmandu and coming to terms with the well balanced blend of both Buddhist and Hindu religions, who up until then had avoided the iconoclastic policies of the Muslims in nearby nations, I trekked toward the holy Himalayas, to a little village called Nawakot.
There I would see what some say is the stairway to heaven.
Looking up at this majestic mountain called Everest and seeing for myself what Sir Ed saw before he started his ascent, is a memory forever ice axed into my mind. And one that I will go walkabout with these next few days as New Zealand farewells its favourite $5 son.
Eighty-eight years is a damn fine innings for the beekeeper from below the Bombays who gave every Kiwi the thumbs up to give life its best shot. Let's hope history etches his amazing achievements on to every classroom blackboard and into every boardroom code of conduct in the country.
The man the Nepalese called Burra-sahib "big in stature _ big in heart" left big footprints to fill.
He was a true legend of the long white cloud who will forever rest on Everest.
Moe mai ra Sir Edmund Hillary OBE.
tommykapai@gmail.com