My old friend Kaji Sherpa certainly did and thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I have the images to prove it.
An e-mail dropped into my in-box the other day, on a grassy field near Malvern, with the simple subject line: 'Everest summit, 13 May, 2011' and the sender's name: Kaji Sherpa. Inside were three photos, two from a summit festooned with prayer flags and scarves...
And bang in the middle of the date-stamped images, was my mate Kaji, on the very top of the world. Just amazing.
Not just that he was there, but that modern technology means that we've just about kept in touch and that he can send me an image from thousands of miles away.
And then I started wondering whether my old ice axe was up there with him. I met Kaji while trekking in to Everest Base Camp ten years or so ago. He was carrying climbing kit for a colleague who was heading up the trekking peak of Lobuche and over a couple of weeks of idyllic ambling from tea house to tea house, I gradually got to know and like him.
He was open, friendly, smiling and brilliant company, not least because having him there meant I learned so much more about the local region and culture. He was, he confided diffidently, really a climbing sherpa, with an ambition to work on the really big expeditions on Everest and the like, but despite 'slumming it' as a porter guide for us, he was never resentful or downbeat, just friendly, helpful and all-round lovely.
Sadly he left us early after a death in the family caused by an unseasonal avalanche, but thanks to e-mail we kept in touch and thanks to the kindness of Tashi Tenzing, one of the Norgay Tenzing clan, around six months later, I sent out my old Mountain Technology ice axe, a proper pack and a shell jacket to Kaji in Kathmandu knowing that he'd make far better use of them than I ever could.
And we've stayed sporadically in touch ever since. Annoyingly we missed each other when I was back in Nepal a few years ago and I was helplessly concerned for him during the dark years of the Maoist insurgency when tourism dipped and times were hard, but he sent me a beautiful Nepalese embroidered tee-shirt with his name on it and a selection of stunning postcards.
He's a lovely guy and it's fantastic to see him on the summit of Everest. Not just because it's an amazing achievement, which it is, but because like most Sherpas, Kaji climbs mostly to earn money to feed his family, send his sons to school and give them a better life than he ever could as a simple farmer in the Khumbu.
And seeing him there on the roof of the world means that he'll be earning good money as a high altitude Sherpa, taking home far more in a few weeks than he'd make in over a year of farming.
And the axe? It'd be nice to think it made it up there, but in a way I kind of hope it didn't – it was a heavy old chunk of metal and I suspect something lighter and more appropriate would have made Kaji's life appreciably easier.
So, Namaste, Kaji Sherpa! Congratulations and thank you for making me smile from thousands of miles and a different world away.
Your friend, Jon.
