Sir Edmund to join other conquerors

Press, 20 May 1987, Page 27

Sir Edmund to join other conquerors

NZPA Hong Kong New Zealand’s High Commissioner to India, Sir Edmund Hillary, is expected to join three other Mount Everest conquerors at an Indian Himalayan Festival In Hong Kong later this month. The festival was being organised by Air India’s Regional Director Far East and Australasia, Captain Mohan Kohli, who led an Indian team to Everest in 1965. On that expedition Captain Kohli established a world record by putting nine men on the summit (eclipsed 17 r years later by a Russian expedition which resulted in 11 men reaching the summit). Other Everest conquerors expected to be in Hong Kong with Sir Edmund included the first Indian lady to reach the summit, Ms Bachendri I®, Major H. P. S. Ahluwalia and Lieutenant Colonel A. S. Cheema. In 1977 Captain Kohli joined Sir Edmund in his From the Ocean to the Sky expedition in which an Indo-New Zealand team used jet-boats up the Ganges. Sir Edmund is expected to be in Hong Kong from May 25 to 28. On May 26 he is scheduled to address a luncheon at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

In 1962 Captain Kohli missed the summit oL Mount Everest by 100 metres and spent three nights at 8500 metres — two without using oxygen. < He was the author of “l ast of the Annapurnas” (1962), “Nine Atop Everest” (1969), “Indians on' Everest” (1971), “Himalayan Treks and Climbs” (1971), “Trek the Himalayas” (1972) and “The Himalayas — Playground of the Gods” (1983).