Sir Edmund Hillary Visitor Centre Khumjung
Project details
The Sir Edmund Hillary Visitor Centre sits inside the very first schoolhouse Sir Edmund Hillary built, the aluminium two-classroom building he put up at Khumjung in 1961. In 2018 the Khumjung community and Himalayan Trust Nepal agreed to turn the disused original classroom into a museum, telling the story of the school, the village and the Trust. Funders included Rolex Perpetual Planet, New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Himalayan Trust organisations from New Zealand, Nepal and the United Kingdom, and Sir Edmund Hillary Stiftung in Germany. It opened to the public on 29 May 2023.
The project traces back to October 1960, when Sir Ed asked his Sherpa companions what he could do for them. Urkien Sherpa's answer, wanting a school for their children, led to the 1961 Khumjung schoolhouse and, from it, the whole Himalayan Trust. Finishing work on the museum decades later was done by Urkien's youngest son. The Centre now runs on ticket and souvenir income that funds the school: by its November 2025 handover it had welcomed 3,000 visitors and saved NPR 1 million.
The story behind the Visitor Centre starts more than sixty years before it opened. In October 1960, Sir Edmund Hillary was camped by the Tolam Bau Glacier during an expedition when he asked his Sherpa companions what one thing he could do for them. Urkien Sherpa's answer was that their children wanted to go to school. The result was the aluminium two-classroom schoolhouse Sir Ed built at Khumjung the following year, with sections flown into the now-disused Mingbo airstrip and carried a day's walk down to the village. It became the first Himalayan Trust project, and requests from other villages for their own schools followed almost immediately.
By 2018, Khumjung School had grown into a large modern campus and the original 1961 classroom stood empty. Local leaders and Himalayan Trust Nepal agreed to turn it into a museum honouring the school's history and Sir Ed's legacy. Sarah Hillary, Sir Ed's daughter, led the project from New Zealand, with Peter Hillary handling fundraising, Rick Pearson as architect and exhibition designer and Alexa Johnston as curator, working alongside a Nepal-based team led by Dr Mingma Norbu Sherpa. One detail closed the loop on the original story: floor and ceiling finishing work in the new museum was carried out by Ang Tshering Sherpa, the youngest son of Urkien Sherpa, the same man whose answer in 1960 had started it all.
The finished exhibition covers ten themes, from the history of Khumjung School to Sagarmatha National Park, and includes a computer display of old class photographs, a video built from historic footage, and a 3D-printed model of Everest as it looked in 1953. It opened to the public on 29 May 2023. A steel superstructure was added over the original aluminium roof in 2024, to protect the heritage building through the monsoon without altering the roof underneath, funded jointly by Peter and Sarah Hillary and by Himalayan Trust Nepal. The Centre went on to win an International Architecture Award from the New Zealand Architecture Awards.
The Centre is run day to day by the Khumjung School Board, funded by souvenir sales and an entry fee for international visitors, with proceeds split between the Centre and the school. By the time it was formally handed over to the School Management Committee on 7 November 2025, in a ceremony led by Peter Hillary and Himalayan Trust Nepal chairman Pasang Dawa Sherpa, it had welcomed more than 3,000 visitors and saved NPR 1 million after covering its own running costs, money now going toward the school's education.