KEY POINTS:
The week I spent in Kathmandu was a week crammed full of "felicitations", as the Nepalese liked to call the endless parades, speeches and ceremonies held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sir Ed's conquest of Mt Everest.
I vividly recall the parade through the capital's city streets, and especially the wave I got from Sir Ed and Lady Hillary when they spotted me in the sea of beaming faces. I remember the royal tea party and the ceremony in Dunbar Square, as the crowds chanted Long Live Edmund Hillary.
I remember the media frenzy that followed his every step.
But for Sir Ed, those were events to be endured with good humour. He had turned down dinner with the Queen and weathered the media storm to be in Nepal on the 50th anniversary for just one reason - he wanted to party "very vigorously indeed" with his Sherpa mates. That night, at the Kathamdu Hyatt Regency, he was at ease and at home.
As the world remembers Sir-Ed - a name that for New Zealanders became one word, a pseudonym for courage, humility, and doggedness - we remember the man who first stood on the roof of the world, the man who lifted the spirits of a crumbling post-war Empire, and the man who brought the impossible within our grasp. But my guess is that, if he thought about being remembered at all, it would be for his work with the Sherpas above anything else. While his ascent of Everest made him a hero, it was the years of devoted service after the climb that made him great.
He realised when he touched down in Auckland to see cheering crowds at the airport that this "Everest thing" was never going away. But rather than let it be a burden, he turned it into a blessing. Not for himself, but for the people of Nepal, and most especially the Sherpa people of the Himalayas.
He cherished their humility, work ethic and good humour. One of his strongest memories of the ascent, he said, was the Sherpas' deep-throated laughter when one of them cracked a good joke. "They'd laugh about it and repeat it again and again. Lying in our tents we listened to the laughter and it was a marvellous feeling."
That night in Kathmandu he told me, "I'm not a strongly religious man but I believe in the Buddhist philosophy that each man or woman must choose his or her own path in life.
"I have chosen mine. It was not only to take part in exciting challenges, but to work with my Sherpa friends to achieve the things that they wanted. And we've worked hard. But the rewards for us have been even greater. June and I have a multitude of friends we admire. What more could we ask than that?"
The Himalayas gave him so much, but it also exacted a price.
His beloved first wife Louise and daughter Belinda died in a plane crash in those foothills. The years immediately after that when he turned to whisky and withdrew from his family were little discussed. Yet through it all he kept working for the people he so admired.
It was 1960, when camped around a fire on a Himalayan glacier, that he asked some Sherpa mates what he could do for them. They asked for education for their children. He always felt fortunate to have been born in New Zealand and so decided to give "a bit of help". It turned into a lifetime's work.
Because of that request, he built 27 schools, and for that reason I visited Chaurikhaka school, near Lukla, in 2003. Herald readers generously gave over $16,000 to build a computer room at the school and stock it with new computers.
My strongest memory of that Nepalese trip is of the school in the hidden Himalayan valley, of the 300 children and their smiles, and of their dedication to study and self-improvement in one of the world's poorest countries.
Sir-Ed represented the gutsy, communal spirit of that war-time generation to whom we owe so much. In an age of self-annointed heroes, he was the real deal. Yet when I asked him about that, he frowned.
"I was never a heroic figure. Not in the way I look at it."
So what do you do with the endless admiration? I asked.
"I say 'thank you very much' and carry on doing the next thing," he replied. And so he did.
His greatness was not just in the strength of those once mighty limbs, but in the strength of his generosity. He was the best of us.
* Tim Watkin travelled to Nepal with Hillary in 2003.
