As news about Sir Edmund Hillary's death, the first man to summit Mount Everest, circled around the world, Sherpas in Nepal mourned the person they considered to be a "second father". A statue and memorial are planned for Hillary.

The gritty mountain community said the larger-than-life New Zealander will be best remembered for his promotion of Nepal as well as his efforts to give something back to the impoverished villages nestled in the mountains.

"We consider him as a second father," said Zimba Zangbu Sherpa, the vice president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

"We are planning a memorial and thinking about a statue in the mountaineering park," said Sherpa, who attended one of the first schools set up by Hillary in the Solokhumbu region in Everest's foothills.

The Himalayan country's tourism minister said Hillary's death was a huge loss for Nepal.

"We have lost a dear friend of Nepal and a worldwide hero," Prithvi Subba Gurung, Nepal's Minister of Tourism, Culture and Civil Aviation told AFP.

"He was an undeclared ambassador for Nepal. When Nepal was going through conflict, he still came and continued to promote Nepal," Gurung said, referring to the decade-long civil war with Maoist rebels that ended in late 2006.