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The day Bachendri conquered the Everest and a lot more

May 23, 1984 — it’s still fresh in her mind. Even after 36 years, she can recount it with all the details, to some extent thanks to the huge interest that people have in her inspiring story. “This morning (Friday) only I shared the story with someone,” she says.

On this day, Bachendri Pal became the first Indian woman to scale the Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world at 8,848m, and etched her name in history.



“It was a life-changing experience,” Pal tells ET Sport.

“I had set certain goals for myself and it was a struggle to achieve those goals. But now when I look back at those days now, it feels good.”

Bachendri Pal is probably the first name that schoolchildren in India find in their textbooks when they are taught about women empowerment. She not only broke the glass ceiling for women in Indian mountaineering, she went on to assume a leadership role and helped many others who dreamed of treading the same path.

“My life had two Everests,” says Pal, who was conferred Padma Bhushan last year.

“First was for myself, to test my limits, to discover myself.

“Second was for youth, for women. So that they don’t face what I had to face.”

The incident
Named ‘Everest ’84’, it was India’s first mixed-team (11 men and 6 women) expedition of the Mount Everest. And it wasn’t without its fair share of drama. The team was divided into two and Pal was part of the forward team. On the night of May 15, the forward team set up its camp at 24,000ft where they were planning to rest for the night before commencing their journey the next morning. At around 12.30am, Pal recalls, she heard a loud sound and minutes later their camp was crushed under a huge mass of snow.

“At first I thought my oxygen cylinder, which was kept outside my camp, burst,” Pal says.

“Suddenly something very heavy fell on me and I was buried under it. It didn’t take me much time to realise what had happened.

“I was conscious and I had a feeling that I would die here.”

Luckily, her climbing partner, who was also sleeping in the same tent, managed to escape and helped her come out of the debris. The other team at the lower camp (at 22,000ft) was informed and they immediately came to their rescue, helping the badly injured return to the base camp.

The accident threatened to derail the mission as most of the team members, who didn’t have major injuries, wanted to return to the base camp and abandon the mission.

“Everyone said no,” Pal says.

“But when it was my turn to answer, I immediately said yes. I wasn’t feeling scared. There was a fresh determination in me. I was thinking if I survived the avalanche, if I am still alive, it should be a signal for me to go ahead. My parents always used to say after every bad moment comes a good moment.

“Thank god I took that decision because whatever I am today is all because of that decision.”

Another team was set up with Ang Dorjee, the Nepali Sherpa, being their guide. Pal was the only female member in this group. They restarted their ascent on May 22 and reached the summit at around 1.00pm on May 23.

“I stayed there for around 45 minutes. I placed a small Durga maa idol there and remembered my parents. I also called the team leader who congratulated me and said a lot of good things. I felt really, really good,” says Pal, who turned 30 a day after achieving the feat.

After that, she led numerous path-breaking expeditions for women as well as for mixed teams. Some of them were:

- An Indo-Nepalese women’s Mount Everest Expedition in 1993

- An all-women team of 18 rafters from Haridwar to Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1994

- An all-women team of eight mountaineers on a seven-month, 4,500km long trans-Himalayan expedition — from Bomdila (Arunachal Pradesh) to Siachen (Ladakh) — in 1997. It was the first successful traverse of the Himalayas

- An all-women team on a desert safari covering the complete Indo-Pak border in 2015

- Mission Namami Gange in 2018 where a team of 40 people travelled from Haridwar to Patna on rafts. They collected around 55,000 kg garbage

Backed by Tata
Pal, who was born on May 24, 1954, in a small village in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, believes she was fortunate to have Tata Steel as her backers.

She joined Tata Steel before her Everest expedition and when she returned after conquering the Everest, a new department (Tata Youth Adventure Centre, TYAC) was created for.

The TYAC was later rechristened as Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TSAF). Today the TSAF is probably the best mountaineering school in the country having produced 10 Everesters so far. Besides training, the TSAF also sponsors mountaineers for their expeditions.

“They empowered me, gave me freedom to take decisions. After that I never looked back. I enjoyed the whole journey so much that I never realised it was time to retire,” says Pal, who retired from TSAF last year but continues to provide her guidance.

“Whatever I have achieved is because of my honesty, my hard work and above all because of Tata Steel.”

There has always been a debate on whether mountaineering should be considered a sport. Though pioneers like Pal never had any doubt about that, the world remained unconvinced for a long time, but not anymore. Sport climbing, a branch of mountaineering, has taken rapid strides in the world of sports. So much so, it is a part of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (now postponed to 2021), and Paris Olympics in 2024 too.

“We, at TSAF, have been very focused at sport climbing for the last 5-6 years now. Today, the national record holder in women’s speed climbing, Anisha Verma, is from TSAF. We also won the national sport climbing championship this year. We are now aiming to replicate the success in international tournaments,” TSAF managing trustee Hemant Gupta, who scaled Mount Everest in 2017 and is the successor of Pal, says.

Mountain Learning
But the TSAF does a lot more than just teaching people how to climb mountains or walls. It was Pal’s vision to turn it into a leadership school where people can discover the leader in themselves through outdoor activities.

“There is no point in climbing the mountain if we don’t bring the spirit and implement the lessons in our day-to-day lives,” she says.

Every officer who joins Tata Steel is sent to the TSAF to complete a 10-day course as part of their training.

But ‘what do you get by climbing up the hills?’ was a question that Pal was frequently asked by the reluctant trainees who didn’t see any logic in going through this rigorous course.

“Initially, it was difficult to explain. I knew that you become physically tough but didn’t have a complete answer. It used to make me very uncomfortable. If I wasn’t able to give a satisfactory answer, what was I doing here?” Pal says.

She found her answers when she started travelling around the world, where she mingled with people from different cultures and gained new insights.

“It basically gives you courage, confidence and makes you value team spirit. When you set a big goal, you don’t achieve it by taking a long or high jump. You divide that big goal into smaller goals, which is similar to mountaineering where you set up camps on your way up the mountain. When you work as a team, it strengthens your tolerance, patience, adaptability and inter-personal skills etc.

“That’s what I think is the job of a leader – to help nurture more leaders,” Pal says.

That’s probably her biggest legacy.

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