One of the world's top mountaineers has left Kathmandu on an expedition to Mount Everest, where he will scatter the ashes of Edmund Hillary, the first man to stand on the summit.
Apa Sherpa, who has scaled Everest a record 19 times, said he wanted to honour Hillary's contribution to the Sherpa communities that inhabit Nepal's eastern Himalayas, where the world's highest mountain is located.
He plans to hold a small Buddhist ceremony at the top of Everest, which the Sherpa people regard as sacred, to pray for the celebrated New Zealand mountaineer.
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"Edmund Hillary is a very important person in Nepal. That's why I'm very happy to be taking his ashes to the top of Everest," Apa, 50, told AFP in Kathmandu before he left on Tuesday.
"I will place his ashes on the top and then I'm going to pray for Edmund Hillary. He was the guy who showed us the route, the first one to get to the top."
Hillary and Sherpa Norgay Tenzing made history on May 29, 1953, when they became the first men to stand on the summit of the 8,848-metre peak.
Most of Hillary's ashes were scattered in the sea off Auckland in his native New Zealand after his death in 2008 aged 88, in accordance with a wish expressed in his book, View from the Summit.
But Apa says some were given to the Sherpa community to be taken to the Everest region, where they were placed in the care of small Buddhist monastery in the village of Kunde.
Apa flew out of the Nepalese capital early on Tuesday bound for the tiny airport of Lukla, high in the Himalayas, to begin his 20th ascent of Everest.
On his way up, he will stop at Kunde to pick up the ashes of the world-famous adventurer.
