Pithoragarh’s Sheetal youngest woman to scale Kanchenjunga
Born in a small village of Pithoragarh, she fell in love with the mountains at an early age. At the age of 22, Sheetal Raj has become the youngest woman to scale Mount Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world.
“When our Sherpa told me we have reached the top, my body was suddenly renewed with energy. It was like a live wire coursing through me. I got extremely overwhelmed, broke down and hugged the Sherpa. It was unbelievable,” said Raj describing her experience of being on the top of the 8,586-metre high summit on May 21.
Raj, daughter of a taxi driver father and homemaker mother, was in love with the mountains since childhood. “I used to accompany my mother when she used to go into the jungles of mountains looking for wood. The view from there and the silence made me feel very peaceful,” she said.
She got her first opportunity to be a part of a climbing expedition in 2014. “I was a member of the NCC unit of my college. They informed us about this expedition and I really wanted to go. I told my parents it was a trip, but even then they refused. I convinced them somehow. Once I came back, they got to know it was a mountain expedition and I got a lot of backlash from my family,” she said.
After much difficulty, Raj got her parents on board and regularly started going on expeditions. She completed a basic mountaineering course from Darjeeling’s Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in 2015. “We were a batch of 150 girls. During the course, we had to climb a peak called Rinok. Only 53 of us managed to do that. After that we had another expedition, which I also cleared. The final one, also known as the pre-Everest was Mount Trishul. Only 15 of us scaled that summit,” Raj said.
Read more at: Hindustan Times
Image source: Hindustan Times