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Women
Claiming the Top Spot for Women
by Sudeshna Sarkar
October 23, 2005
Since
the 1850s, when it was recognized as the highest mountain in the world,
Mt Everest has meant different things to different people. It is the
abode of the gods, the ultimate adventure destination, a symbol of
courage and heroic endurance. The year 2005 adds a new significance: the
8,848 meter high peak is the new icon for women - a testament to the
fact that more and more women are reaching the top. Literally.
The season began on a good note, with Spain's Rosa Fernandez being the
first climber to reach the summit (from Tibet on May 21, and despite bad
weather).
After the first conquest of the peak on May 29, 1953 - by New Zealander
Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa - two decades passed before
a woman set foot on the peak. On May 16, 1975, Junko Tabei of Japan led
an all-Japanese women's expedition, braving even a massive avalanche, to
become the first woman to emulate Hillary and Tenzing's feat.
On October 31 this year, Tabei, the First Lady of the Mountains, will
celebrate the 30th anniversary of her ascent with a novel party in
Kathmandu, to which she has invited all women 'Everesters'. So far, of
the over 2,000 climbers who have made it to the summit, only about 100
are women. But 2005, saw a record 12 women scaling the summit. (This is
a conservative estimate because, while Nepal's tourism ministry keeps
good records, attempts to climb the Everest from the Tibetan side are
not always documented.)
Probably the most memorable - and feted - expedition this year was by
the team from Iran, which included the first-ever Muslim women
Everesters. Of the 14-member team, seven were women and two of them
climbed the Everest peak. Farkhondeh Sadegh, 36, a graphic designer, and
Loleh Keshavarz, 26, a dentist, stood on the summit along with 10 more
members of the Iranian expedition. When the team had checked into
Kathmandu's Royal Singhi Hotel, the women had been an object of
curiosity, even derision, for some. Without bothering to even speak to
them, a western journalist wondered if they would be able to make it to
the top with their headscarves.
Sadegh, the leader of the women's sub-team, took it in her stride. After
their triumph, she said, "Foreigners, especially westerners, think
Iranian women just stay at home and mind their babies. In our
universities, 65 per cent of the students are women; we hold important
positions in the workplace; there are women in Parliament. We
volunteered to climb Mt Everest because we wanted to show the other
countries that we can do anything we want to."
Also memorable was the climb by Danielle Fisher, 20, who became the
youngest American woman to reach the top as well as the youngest woman
climber to have scaled the seven highest summits in the world. Fisher's
ascent was a personal triumph since she has Attention Deficit Disorder,
a problem that makes it difficult to concentrate. As a six-year-old, the
malady made things difficult at school but later, up among the
mountains, Danielle found a far better cure than medicine could offer.
As she told the media back home, "The more time I spend on the
mountains, the more that shapes my life and helps me focus."
In this magic year for women mountaineers, it was apt that Lhakpa Sherpa
should scale the summit. It was her fifth ascent, besting her own record
in 2004 as the woman who has climbed Mt Everest the most. But more
memorable than numbers is Lhakpa's background.
She comes from the Sherpa community, a mountain people of Tibetan
origin, known for their ability to withstand freezing temperatures, bear
heavy weights and their familiarity with the high mountains. However,
while Sherpa men are much in demand as mountaineering guides, the
community expects its women to be cook, tend yaks and look after the
children when their husbands are away climbing. Lhakpa grew up in a
family of 11 siblings, and has not been to school. As a young woman, she
saw others climbing Mt Sagarmatha - as Everest is known in Nepal - and
she smoldered with the desire to attempt the peak herself. "If I can
climb the Everest," she would tell herself, "I can be somebody."
How the illiterate village woman became Nepal's national heroine is
movingly portrayed in 'Daughters of Everest', a documentary by two
Nepali women, Sapana Sakya and Ramyata Limbu, which chronicles the first
Sherpa women's expedition to Mount Everest in 2000. Lhakpa became the de
facto leader of the expedition, and her letters trying to raise money
for the climb caught the eye of the daughter of the then prime minister,
enabling the team to set off. Today, Lhakpa has put one of her sisters
through fashion school in Paris and helped another, Ming Kipa, set a
record for being the youngest climber to summit Mt Everest - in 2003 at
the age of 15.
This year also serves as a reminder of the flip side of the coin - the
trials that women Everesters face by virtue of their gender. Sukhwinder
Kaur's story is a case in point.
In May, Kaur from Muktsar in Punjab, became an overnight celebrity - for
all the wrong reasons. She had teamed up with Project Himalaya, a
14-member international expedition, to climb Mt Everest. Coming from a
low-income family, she barely managed to raise the money for the climb
from sponsors and then, finding herself stuck high on the slope and
unable to go up, she lost the nerve to come back, thinking of her
family's displeasure if she failed.
Kaur's predicament became known only after Australian climber Duncan
Chessell, who was part of the expedition, sent out a public SOS to her
family. In a dispatch titled 'Kamikaze - Indian Woman Sukhi Vows -
Summit or Death', posted on the expedition's website, Chessell wrote,
"She is totally out of her depth - not sufficient climbing experience to
summit, no stamina, no speed, no skills, no balance, she is the worst
climber on the mountain." Yet her sister kept urging Kaur to go up,
asking the expedition how much extra money they would charge to put her
on top.
When Kaur's story hit the headlines - with Chessell warning her family
they would be responsible for her death if they withheld permission for
her descent - her father and sister finally relented. Kaur survived the
descent, reached home safely and is said to be readying for another
attempt without being unduly affected by her ordeal. All the same, the
story leaves behind a gloomy feeling. A stark reminder that the daughter
is yet to be regarded as an independent entity - even when she is
scaling the Everest.
By arrangement with
Women's Feature Service
Top
| Women
The Week of October 23, 2005
United States-India Strategic
Partnership Reviewed
by Dr. Subhash Kapila
The New York Times on a Roll
by Gaurang Bhatt, MD
Cikhandi Syndrome by J. Ajithkumar
The Law: Congealed Colonialism
by Arvind Narrain
Putting Off Pregnancy
by Nitin Jugran Bahuguna
A Beautiful Brown, at What Cost?
by Naunidhi Kaur
Natural
Calamities and Vastu
by Niranjan Babu Bangalore and
Raman Suprajarama
The Tearful Jerks by Soma
Guru
Claiming the Top Spot for Women
by Sudeshna Sarkar
The Witty Side - A weekly column by
Melvin Durai
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