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When Apple’s film “Tenzing” opens in October 2026, viewers will meet a quiet but important character named Dawa Phuti, played by Nepali actor Thinley Lhamo. In the film, she is the wife of Tenzing Norgay, and her belief in him helps him win a real place on the 1953 Everest expedition.
Dawa Phuti loved Tenzing Norgay when he was a poor porter with nothing to his name, she left her family for him against their wishes, and she died nine years before he became one of the most famous men on Earth. She never saw the summit. She never even heard the name Edmund Hillary.
Who was Dawa Phuti?
Dawa Phuti was a Sherpa woman from Thame, also written as Thami, a small village a few hours’ walk from Namche Bazaar in the Khumbu region of Nepal. Her family was wealthy by village standards.
Tenzing Norgay knew that village well. He was born around May 1914, most likely in the Kharta valley of Tibet, and grew up in Thame after his family fell on hard times. His father was a yak herder who lost his animals to disease, and young Tenzing worked as a helper for better-off Sherpa families.
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So this was the starting point: the daughter of a wealthy man, and a poor boy who looked after other people’s animals. In a small mountain village in the 1930s, that was not a match any parent would accept.
Dawa Phuti and Tenzing Norgay Relationship
Dawa Phuti’s parents were against the relationship. Tenzing also wanted to climb, and in those days every Everest expedition was organized from Darjeeling in India.
So around 1932, Tenzing and Dawa Phuti ran away together. Along with a group of Sherpa friends, they walked out of the Khumbu and crossed the mountains to Darjeeling. Tenzing was still a teenager. They settled in Toong Soong Busti, the crowded Sherpa neighborhood of Darjeeling, and by early 1935 they were married.
In 1935, the British climber Eric Shipton came to Darjeeling to hire Sherpas for an Everest reconnaissance expedition. Tenzing, newly married and completely unknown, managed to get himself hired. He did so well that the British took him again on the Everest expeditions of 1936 and 1938.
Those years slowly built the climber the world would later celebrate. But expedition work paid little and took the men away for months at a time. While Tenzing was on the mountain, Dawa Phuti ran the household in Darjeeling, in real poverty, waiting for a husband who might not come back.
In 1939, the Himalayan Club awarded Tenzing the Tiger’s Badge, an honor given to the best high-altitude Sherpas.
How many children does Tenzing Norgay and Dawa Phuti had?
Dawa Phuti and Tenzing had three children. Their son, Nima Dorje, died when he was only four years old. By some accounts, Tenzing was away working when the boy died. Their daughter Pem Pem was born in the late 1930s, and a second daughter, Nima, arrived in the early 1940s, around the time the family moved once again.
Dawa Phuti Death
During the Second World War, Everest expeditions stopped and work in Darjeeling dried up. Tenzing took a job far away in Chitral, a mountain region in the northwest of British India, in the country we now call Pakistan. He worked there for a British Army officer, Major Chapman, and Dawa Phuti and the children joined him.
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In 1944, Dawa Phuti fell ill and died. She was buried in Chitral, far from both Thame and Darjeeling. The old records do not tell us exactly what illness took her, and no one ever wrote down her age.
Tenzing was left alone in a distant land with two small daughters. When his time in Chitral ended, he brought Pem Pem and Nima back to Darjeeling, crossing the width of India by train. One detail from that trip became famous: he traveled without a ticket, wearing an old uniform Major Chapman had given him, and no inspector dared to question a man dressed like a soldier.
After Dawa Phuti Death
About a year after Dawa Phuti’s death, Tenzing married again. His second wife, Ang Lahmu, was Dawa Phuti’s cousin. She had no children of her own, and she raised Pem Pem and Nima as her own daughters.
Ang Lahmu was the wife at Tenzing’s side through his hardest and greatest years: the failed attempts, the near miss with the Swiss team in 1952, and finally the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first people confirmed to reach the top of Mount Everest. It was his seventh expedition to the mountain he called Chomolungma, the mother goddess of the world.
That same year, Dawa Phuti’s daughters lived a moment their mother could never have imagined. Pem Pem and Nima, by then teenagers, traveled with their father, Ang Lahmu, and the Everest team to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen. The girls from a one-room home in Toong Soong Busti stood inside a royal palace in London.
Ang Lahmu died in 1964. Tenzing’s third wife, Daku, whom he married while Ang Lahmu was still alive, as Sherpa custom allowed, gave him three sons, Norbu, Jamling, and Dhamey, and a daughter, Deki. Daku was the wife who traveled the world with Tenzing during his years of fame, and she died in 1992.
Her Legacy
Dawa Phuti daughter Nima grew up and married a Filipino graphic designer, Noli Galang. Her daughter Pem Pem raised a son, Tashi Tenzing, who climbed Mount Everest himself, carrying his grandmother’s blood back to the mountain that shaped the family’s fate.
And in a quiet way, she is part of Everest’s story. Tenzing once wrote that the pull of Everest was “stronger for me than any force on earth.” Dawa Phuti was the person who ran away with him so that he could follow that pull.
Dawa in the Movie “Tenzing” (2026)
In Apple’s upcoming film, Thinley Lhamo plays Dawa, Tenzing’s wife. In the official story, her encouragement helps Tenzing find an ally in expedition secretary Jill Henderson, played by Caitríona Balfe, and together they persuade expedition leader Colonel John Hunt, played by Willem Dafoe, that Tenzing belongs on the 1953 British climbing team as a climber, not a servant. Apple describes the film as a story of greatness and “the love that makes it possible.”
The wife at Tenzing’s side in 1953 was Ang Lahmu, but the film’s character carries the name Dawa, like his first wife. Until the film comes out, we do not know exactly how it handles this. Films based on true stories often blend real people into one character, and the movie’s Dawa may combine his first love and the wife of his Everest years into a single woman. What matters is that, for the first time, a major film is putting the woman behind Tenzing Norgay on screen at all.
Thinley Lhamo, who plays her, is a Nepali actor of Tibetan heritage who won the Boccalino d’Oro acting prize at the Locarno Film Festival in 2024 for “Shambhala.” “Tenzing” opens in select US theaters on October 9, 2026, and streams worldwide on Apple TV from October 16, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Dawa Phuti?
Dawa Phuti was the first wife of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa mountaineer who climbed Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary in 1953. She came from a wealthy Sherpa family in Thame, Nepal, and eloped with Tenzing to Darjeeling around 1932, when he was still a poor, unknown porter.
How did Dawa Phuti die?
She fell ill and died in 1944 in Chitral, in what is now Pakistan, where Tenzing was working for a British Army officer during the Second World War. She was buried there. The records do not say exactly what illness caused her death.
Did Dawa Phuti see Tenzing Norgay climb Everest?
No. She died in 1944, nine years before the famous climb on May 29, 1953. She never saw her husband become world famous, and she never met Edmund Hillary.
How many wives did Tenzing Norgay have?
Three. His first wife, Dawa Phuti, died in 1944, Second wife, Ang Lahmu, was Dawa Phuti’s cousin, raised his daughters, and died in 1964. His third wife, Daku, was the mother of his sons Norbu, Jamling, and Dhamey and his daughter Deki, and she died in 1992.
Who were Dawa Phuti’s children?
She and Tenzing had a son, Nima Dorje, who died at the age of four, and two daughters, Pem Pem and Nima. Pem Pem’s son Tashi Tenzing later climbed Mount Everest himself.
Who plays Dawa in the movie “Tenzing”?
Nepali actor Thinley Lhamo plays Dawa. She is known for her lead role in “Shambhala” and won a major acting prize at the Locarno Film Festival in 2024.
Is the Dawa in the film the same person as Dawa Phuti?
The character carries the name of Tenzing’s first wife, but in real history the wife at his side during the 1953 expedition was Ang Lahmu.
When does the movie “Tenzing” come out?
It opens in select US theaters on October 9, 2026, and starts streaming worldwide on Apple TV on October 16, 2026.
