There are number of other feats achieved by this greatest mountaineer and at least a couple of them are worth recalling.
He led an extraordinary trek to the South Pole with a caravan of converted tractors and became the first person to reach the pole by vehicle in 1958 and the third person to arrive there over land since Amundsen and Scott in 1911 and 1912 respectively. He had traveled 2000 k.ms in 80 days and in the last lap of his journey which consisted a 32 k.ms for reaching the polar base, he was left with one drum of petrol; but for this conqueror of Mount Everest nothing was insurmountable. He had faced all, name it, whether soft-snow, strong and gusty winds, intense cold or engine failures, he had surmounted all the insurmountable and achieved his feat.
In 1977, he led a Jet-boat expedition up to the Ganges River, traversing about 1500 miles to get as close as possible to the river’s sources.
But for all the feats, Sir Edmund, affectionately called ‘Ed’, never considered himself a hero. In one of the interviews with a leading daily, he had observed something similar to this. I was just a country-boy. I though people would be interested in mountaineering, but, I did not even dream that it would have such far-reaching impact even on people who did not climb mountains.