Nepal's Sherpas have gone into mourning at the death of Sir Edmund Hillary and pledged to ensure his legacy lives on in the community he has helped since the first conquest of Everest in 1953.
"We consider him as a second father," said Zimba Zangbu Sherpa, the vice president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
"We are planning a memorial and thinking about a statue in the mountaineering park," said Sherpa, who attended one of the first schools set up by Hillary in the Solokhumbu region in Everest's foothills.
Hillary conquered the 8,848-metre mountain with the aid of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
He returned the following year to launch community projects in the impoverished region around the base of the world's tallest mountain where Sherpas live.
Hillary's trust built schools and hospitals, and trained health workers in the harsh, mountainous region. He also helped build an airstrip to promote tourism.
"His work changed the life of the whole Sherpa community. Without his work, especially the schools, the Sherpas would be nowhere. I am sure it (his work) will continue," Sherpa said.
Sherpa friends of Sir Edmund lit butter lamps and offered special Buddhist prayers in monasteries for the mountaineer, calling him a great philanthropist and friend of Nepal.
In 2003, the government conferred honourary Nepali citizenship on Hillary in recognition of his services to the people and the
Solukhumbhu region where Mount Everest is located.
"I lit butter lamps and offered prayers for his reincarnation as a human being," said Ang Rita Sherpa, 60, an old friend who has worked for 23 years with Hillary and his Himalayan Trust that implements development projects in Nepal.
Hillary's projects built 26 schools, two hospitals, an airport, numerous trails and provided scholarships for Sherpa children in the Himalayan nation, home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains including Mount Everest.
"He has done so much for us. If he is incarnated he can again continue to do good work for the human beings," said Ang Rita, a devout Buddhist and the first graduate of the first school opened by Hillary in the Everest region in 1960s.
"Many Sherpa people have offered private prayers while many others are holding special services in monasteries," he said, adding that Hillary's friends and Sherpas would organise a special service for him in Kathmandu.
Hillary, an avid environmentalist, was instrumental in opening the Sagarmatha National Park that has played a pivotal role in preserving mountain environments in the Everest region.
Sagarmatha, or the head of the ocean, is the Nepali name of the mountain. The 1953 feat of Hillary and Tenzing Norgay brought scenic Nepal into the limelight as a hotspot for adventure tourism in the world.
Tenzing Norgay died in 1986 in Darjeeling, India, at the age of 72.
"It is very important for the people on the mountain to treat the mountain with considerable respect ... do all you can to protect them, keep them clean," Hillary told Reuters in an interview during his last visit to Nepal in April last year.
Hillary's other close friends said his death, at the age of 88, was a great loss for the impoverished Himalayan nation.
"It (the death) was not unexpected unfortunately," said Elizabeth Hawley, a mountaineering historian and a long time Hillary friend.
"But still it is a terrible loss for all his family, friends and the Sherpa people."
"The death is a very great loss for Nepal, specially for the Sherpas," said Hawley, who also works for the Trust.
She said the Trust would continue its activities among the
sherpas.
