Rock Climbing

In the history of mountaineering, 29 May 1953 is considered a golden day, when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary scaled the top of Mount Everest, the highest peak (8,850 m) in the world. This historic feat brought about considerable mountaineering awareness in India. It was then that the thought of popularising this activity in our country came up, because India has beautiful, high mountains in the Himalayas. Thus, on the initiative and instance of our first Prime Minister Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru and the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Dr B.C. Roy, that the Himalayan Institute of Mountaineering at Darjeeling was set up in 1954 of which Tenzing Norgay was appointed as Director of Field Training. The idea behind this project was to commemorate this great event in the honour of Tenzing Norgay, and to impart mountaineering training in India on proper and scientific lines.

India was hardly aware of this type of adventurous activity earlier. There were only one or two small expeditions like Trishul Expedition 1951, organized by one of the Doon School masters, Gurdial Singh, who later became an important climber in the Indian mountaineering history.

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