How easy is walking length of NZ as a Sherpa?
As his last name suggests, Tsewang Nuru Sherpa was told a lot that his four-month 3000km walk through New Zealand must have been a walk in the park.
“It should be feeling too easy, it doesn’t matter how heavy your pack is, you should be fine,” Tsewang was told over and over, he said.
But while “mountains are somewhere that I feel very alive”, he did not take up hiking until four years ago when he moved to study his master’s degree at Lincoln University in Canterbury.
When he joined the university’s tramping club, he fully realised the impact New Zealand has had on his birthplace, and was inspired to trek the whole Te Araroa Trail to raise money for the Himalayan Trust, founded by Sir Edmund Hillary.
“I actually started my education career from the second school that was built by Sir Edmund Hillary up in the Everest region of Nepal,” he said.
Growing up in Chaurikharka, the gateway to Mount Everest, Tsewang has mountaineering in his genes, but explained Sherpas are an ethnic tribe up in the mountains first and foremost.
He said many worked in other sectors, including himself, an environmental researcher, rather than the mountaineering sector as the group was widely known for.
His body was “exhausted and everything hurt” when he arrived in Bluff on February 22 after beginning the journey from Cape Reinga in October.
But it was a drive to raise money for the organisation set up by Hillary that motivated Tsewang to fight through the pain.
His father, Ngawang Karsang Sherpa, a mountain trekking guide and Buddhist teacher, regularly helped create jobs for locals, renovate stupas (Buddhist temples), and find sponsors for kids who could not afford education in the valley.
Tsewang later “connected the dots” that they were often efforts funded by the trust. “It gave me more understanding about my own life.”
Because he had been “on the receiving end” of the trust’s support himself, Tsewang wanted to give back.
“It’s fantastic for me to have one foot in Nepal and then one foot elsewhere where I’m navigating my own path but also not forgetting my roots.
“The excitement of being on the trail and the thought of getting towards the end goal outweighs all the physical exhaustion on my body.”
There were days when he didn’t feel like walking at all and was filled with self doubt and mental exhaustion, but he was “thrilled to finish”.
Tsewang raised over $4400 and said while his trail walk was over, he’d continue his fundraising efforts.