Bachendri Pal

Sheela Reddy of the Outlook interviews Bachendri Pal, the fist Indian woman to climb Mount Everest.

If someone had told Bachendri Pal before May 23, 1984, that her life would change forever after climbing Mount Everest, she would probably have laughed. That’s what the villagers of Nakuri did when they saw Bachendri train for the climb. “Bachendri is trying to restore the height of our eroded hills,” they jeered as they watched her climb up the hill with a load of rocks in her rucksack. Her father, who made a bare living by farming, joined in good-naturedly: “After her degrees, Bachendri has found no job she likes as much as a coolie’s”. But her mother, a Garhwali villager who’d worked hard to educate Bachendri, was upset. Bachendri was the first person in Nakuri with M.A. and BEd degrees, and the last thing her mother wanted her to do was to haul rocks up hills. It seemed too close to her own life of climbing everyday for water and firewood.

Like many girls, Bachendri dreamt of a secure job and perhaps meeting her hero, Indira Gandhi. But she didn’t know how, except to study hard and acquire college degrees. Then, a chance visit to Nakuri by the then vice-principal of the Indian Institute of Mountaineering, Major Prem Chand, changed everything. “He saw me sitting idle and jobless, and suggested I join up for a mountain climbing course.” Bachendri snatched at the chance. “I was good at sports, and was restless cooped up indoors,” she recalls.

Climbing came naturally to this sturdy mountain girl who’d grown up hauling water and fuel down mountain slopes. In her first training camp, selectors soon labelled her “Everest material”, but it took time to convince her to join the Everest expedition in 1984.

It was her very first expedition; even before the team reached the base camp, she heard about a Sherpa porter killed in an avalanche and a cook who died of altitude sickness. There were three women in the summit teams, but by the time they climbed to 25,000 feet, she was the only woman left to push on to the summit with nine men.

“People think climbing is about physical power. You need more mental strength,” she says, recalling the day when an avalanche bore down on the camp. “Women can endure more, have more patience.” One sherpa was injured, and all nine men in her team turned back. Team leader Col Khullar asked Bachendri: “Are you scared?” “Yes,” she said. “Would you like to go down?” “No,” she replied without hesitation.

Bachendri joined four male mountaineers for the final ascent. The snow had hardened, and on the brittle slope, every step hovered between life and death. Which is why, Bachendri says, her only emotion when she reached the summit was the thought: “God knows if I’ll make it down”. Fame is the last thing on your mind when you climb. It’s relief, then getting ready to descend: one deliberate step after another, refusing to acknowledge fear.

For her, the real triumph was when she finally got to meet Indira Gandhi, who urged her to inspire village girls “to take up climbing as an adventure sport rather than out of the compulsion of fetching water or firewood”. Bachendri took the advice to heart, leading many teams of women climbers. “What will you get by climbing a mountain?” the villagers had asked. Bachendri answers: “By climbing a mountain, you learn about yourself—how to set a goal and achieve it, how to stay mentally strong in difficult circumstances and how the Everest is not as hard as the mountain within your own mind.”