Museum

  
HMI has the oldest mountaineering Museum of the country which was established in 1957. It serves as a center of educational research on mountaineering activities both for the trainees and research scholars.

It has a rich collection of models, paintings, sculpture, photographs, manuscripts, autographs, books, and mountaineering equipment belonging to famous mountaineers, dresses and other cultural belonging of hill folk. It has two sections i.e. the Main museum and Everest museum. The Everest section gives chronological history of attempts on Mt. Everest starting from 1852 when peak XV on survey of India Map was found by Mr. Radhanath Sikdhar as world’s highest peak and named after Sir George Everest, the then survey General of India.
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Important collections in the Museum are as follows:
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An important letter from H. H. the Dalai Lama, through which he granted the permission to the first British expedition on 20th December1920.
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Initially the expeditions used to pass through a Dak Bunglow in Thambu (Sikkim) instead of the present routes through Nepal & China. The Dak Bunglow register containing the original signatures of various eminent mountaineers since 1921 is preserved here.
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Portent information along with original signature & equipments used in the controversial expedition of 1924 by Mallory & Irvine.
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Equipments used by Tensing, Sir John Hunt & Sir Edmund Hillary during 1953 expedition
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Important information & Route map of first Indian Mt. Everest in1960.
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Original equipment used by Nawang Gombu who is the first man to climbed Mt Everest twice during 1963 and 1965 Everest
HMI museum is open to General public and is a must in the itinerary of all tourists visiting Darjeeling. A state-of-the-art new museum is being built by HMI for which the building is almost ready and efforts are on for the best visualization and interior works.

Hitler’s Telescope : A powerful Veb Cal Zeiss Jena telescope capable of astronomical observations installed at HMI, is of great interest to the visitors. One can view the beautiful Kangchenjunga range through this telescope. It was presented by Adolf Hitler to Majaraja Judh Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, Commander-in-Chief of Royal Nepal Army. It was passed down to his son General Shamsher Jung Bahadur Rana, who presented it to Himalayan Mountaineering Institute on 7th July 1961.

“It is the quality of on work which will please God and not its quantity.”