The New Zealander who became the first man to conquer Mount Everest has arrived in the Himalayan nation of Nepal to a hero's reception, but it was almost too much for the 83-year-old.
Sir Edmund Hillary is in Kathmandu for the 50th anniversary next Thursday of the day he and Sherpa Tenzing stood for the first time on the highest point on Earth.
The world's most famous mountaineer had been greeted earlier this week by similar scenes in India which, combined with intense heat, had exhausted him so much he needed a wheelchair when he arrived in Nepal.
ONE News journalist Mark Sainsbury, who is travelling with Sir Edmund, said Hillary was simply mobbed by photographers and reporters.
"The Hillary party was getting quite disturbed," Sainsbury said.
"They had to get him into a car as soon as possible. It was like a film star arriving, really."
The Hillarys had already had a taste of mob adulation when they arrived in India, and wife Lady Hillary said the media treatment in Delhi was "frantic".
"We thought we'd seen everything, but here it was very unexpected. We just had to push through as hard as we could and get out of it," she said.
There had been rumours Hillary had caught some sort of bug in India, but his wife denied it.
"We'd had an extremely busy time and it was 44 degrees! And there were outside functions and all sorts of things and he was just exhausted."
Hillary's Himalaya Trust has set up schools, hospitals, clinics, roads, bridges and other projects for the sherpas who have become his friends over the past 50 years.
He is resting overnight New Zealand time and then heads into a hectic schedule of engagements in the mountain kingdom ahead of next week's fiftieth jubilee of the conquest of Everest.
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