There was his father, Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, who at 19 summited Mount Everest without any additional oxygen, becoming the youngest to do so. Then there were his uncles, the first brothers to scale the world's 14 highest peaks together.
But at 18, he has already outpaced them all. Last month, he became the youngest person to summit the world's 14 highest mountains - spread across Nepal, Pakistan, China and India - a mission he began aged just 16.
When he set out to climb his first of the 14 peaks - Mount Manaslu in Nepal, which at 8,100m is the world's eighth highest mountain - it was not to break any records or to hunt for glory.
"To begin with, I was just curious about the experience, but every step felt so natural," said Sherpa. "I loved the rawness of the mountains and how your thought process changes when everything is just about life or death."
Esta historia es de la edición November 01, 2024 de The Guardian Weekly.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición November 01, 2024 de The Guardian Weekly.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Power in the darkness
Wolf Hall is back. As the extraordinary epic about King Henry VIII and his vengeful entourage edges to a climax, Timothy Spall reveals what it was like to play Cromwell's nemesis
It's time for Trump's instincts to be called what they are: fascist
There is a good chance that on 5 November, Americans will elect the first fascist president of the United States.
CASTLES IN THE AIR
It was meant to be a dream development of mansions in the Turkish hills. But 13 years on, Burj AI Babas is a half-built ghost town, and a microcosm of the scandal-hit construction sector under Erdoğan. Will the buyers ever get to move in?
Using cutting-edge methods, Alexandra Morton-Hayward is unravelling the mysteries of grey matter – even as hers betrays her The brain collector
ALEXANDRA MORTON-HAYWARD, a 35-year-old mortician turned molecular palaeontologist, had been behind the wheel of her rented Vauxhall for five hours, motoring across three countries, when a torrential storm broke loose on the plains of Belgium.
Dark times Blackouts spark fears of wider collapse
Maria Elena Cárdenas is 76 and lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana's colonial old town.
Washington Post sparks fury over decision not to endorse
Fury and shock ripped through liberal America last weekend after news that the Washington Post, home of the Watergate scandal exposé, will not endorse Kamala Harris for president.
The great space waste
From chaotic collisions to depletion of the ozone layer, the thousands of satellites in orbit around Earth have the potential to wreak havoc
New heights Teen Sherpa's fight for climbing equality
Growing up as a sherpa in Nepal, Nima Rinji Sherpa was used to his relatives performing superhuman feats on the mountains.
Plastic cave made in Spain keeps Amazonian culture alive
It is not yet dawn in Ulupuwene, an Indigenous village in the Brazilian Amazon, but the Wauja people have already risen to prepare for the festive day ahead.
Putin's call to de-dollarise alarms some at Brics talks
Vladimir Putin opened the expanded Brics summit last month by issuing a call for an alternative international payments system that could prevent the US using the dollar as a political weapon.
