Tejbir Bura was a mountaineer and non-commissioned army officer of the Nepalese Gurkha Army during the British rule. Bura later became an officer in the British Indian Army in the rank of a Naik, which is equivalent to Corporal, in the 2nd Battalion of the 6th Gurkha Rifles. In 1922, he was a member of the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition, led by Charles Granville Bruce. Bura, together with Bruce and George Finch, reached the height of 7,925 m (26,000 ft) on May 27, 1922. The members of the expedition were awarded Olympic gold medals in Alpinism on the occasion of the 1924 Winter Olympics by Baron de Coubertin. Initially only medals had been awarded to the 12 British and one Australian nationals. On Bruce’s request, later eight additional medals were given to Tejbir Bura and the Sherpa porters. Expedition team member described Bura as “the most promising of all our Gurkhas“. In 2012, the gold medals were taken to the top of the Mount Everest, as promised to Coubertin during the medal ceremony in 1924. One member of the 2012 expedition called “Tejbir … the most overlooked son of Nepal”.
Nepal