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Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, after their historic ascent of the earth’s highest point, the peak of Mt. Everest, on May 29, 1953. Photograph by AP.

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Pasang Kami, my Sherpa guide on many treks and countless acts of kindness.

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Younger brother Robert, me, mother Louise, and father Herbert Blum circa 1942, three years before cancer took my father’s life.

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With my seven grandchildren, on the same slide of my own childhood. Left to right: Mitchell, Spencer, Tristan, me, Julien, Eileen, Léa, and baby Benjamin.

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Reclining along the Khumbu Glacier with briefcase (a gag for my Sutro partners). Mt. Everest in background, 1972.

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Boyhood dream: standing with Tenzing Norgay and Sir Ed at the Potala Palace in Lhasa, 1981.

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We pledged to help educate P. K.’s six children and his grandchildren. Years later, his oldest daughter, Nawang (here, in 2009), established the Khumbu’s first dental practice.

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A little girl in traditional Tibetan dress at Dakmar day-care center in Nepal’s Upper Mustang, 2014.

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Guided by Italian artist Luigi Fieni, three dozen Newaris and Lobas have been restoring exquisite wall paintings in LoMontang temples for more than a decade. Photo by Luigi Fieni.

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The ancient walled city of LoMontang, 2010.

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Raja Jigme Bista, king of Mustang, the 26th in an unbroken line dating back to the fifteenth century, with me on the preferred method of transit, LoMontang, 2010.

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With Erica Stone, president of American Himalayan Foundation, and ladies of the Jampaling Tibetan Settlement in Nepal, in 2010.

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Dr. Aruna Uprety and Stop Girl Trafficking students. SGT has protected more than 17,000 Nepali girls from being trafficked into slavery by keeping them informed and in school.

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An iconic temple at UNESCO World Heritage Site in Bhaktapur, reduced to rubble by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake on April 25, 2015. Photo by Luigi Fieni.

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Bruce Moore (left), American Himalayan Foundation’s regional director, in Sindhupalchok, bringing emergency relief bags filled with clothes and supplies to SGT girls in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake. Photo by Luigi Fieni.

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Dr. Ashok Banskota, with a young clubfoot patient. 70,000 poor, disabled Nepali children have received life-changing surgery and care at the Hospital and Rehabilitation Center for Disabled Children over the past 25 years.

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President Jimmy Carter and Nawang Tenzing, Incarnate Lama of Tengboche, with a crowd of young monks at Tengboche Monastery, 1985.

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President Carter speaking to villagers in Ghana about Guinea worm in 2007. Carter Center efforts reduced the cases of the dreaded disease from 10,000 in 2005 to 22 by the end of 2015. Photo courtesy of The Carter Center.

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Celebrating the purchase of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, in 1967. Judge Roy Hofheinz and Irvin Feld made it on time to Rome’s Colosseum. I arrived too late, coming from South Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Feld Entertainment.

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With His Holiness in Dharamsala a few days before Dianne’s first (and only) Khumbu trek, November 1978.

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A city hall wedding, 1980.

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Greeting Queen Elizabeth II in San Francisco, 1983.

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With Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, 1982. Dianne and I presented him with a cross sculpted from 15 melted-down handguns, including one she once owned.

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With Dianne and Fritz Mondale in San Francisco during his 1984 campaign for President. American government, he said, has a duty to “protect the disadvantaged.” Photo by Vici MacDonald / San Francisco Chronicle / Polaris.

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At his Inauguration in 2009, President Obama carried a Tibetan khata (ceremonial scarf) in his pocket that I had handed to him earlier that day—a gift from His Holiness.

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Jiang Zemin, China’s leader in the 1990s and a friend since the 1980s. The tension in the photo reflects our discussion about his army’s oppression of Tibetans.

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What’s better than a hug from His Holiness the Dalai Lama?

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With George Shultz and Dianne, inaugurating a new home for the Blum Center for Developing Economies, at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2010.

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The first crew in Sudan to assemble Darfur Stoves, a Blum Center innovation that improves fuel efficiency for cooking in the refugee camps there.

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Walking toward LoMontang in some of the world’s most breathtaking landscapes, and among some of its most hospitable people. The range behind us is the Annapurnas.

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An aerial view of Namche Bazaar, with 22,349-foot Ama Dablam in the distance, 2015. Photo by Norbu Tenzing.

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With brothers Jamling and Norbu Tenzing at the unveiling ceremony of their father Tenzing Norgay’s statue in the Khumbu, 2014.

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Traveling with yaks was a way of life for most people in the Khumbu in 1972, the year I took this photo. Sherpa living standards have improved markedly since then.

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Tsedo, AHF field director, visits the prayer room in a home for Tibetan elders in Nepal, 2015. Tsedo’s parents escaped Tibet in 1959, shortly after His Holiness had fled the Chinese. Photo by Luigi Fieni.

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Kangshung Face aerial view. Photo by Bill Thompson.

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Ama Dablam with Tengboche Monastery in foreground. Photo by Gil Roberts, 1999.

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With President Bill Clinton on stage at UC Berkeley, where we welcomed 6,000 people to “Courage to Create,” the opening session of Clinton Global Initiative University’s annual meeting in 2016. Photo by Max Orenstein / Clinton Global Initiative.