With an eye on scaling World’s highest peak Mount Everest, the young trained female mountaineer of Kashmir Nahida Manzoor has started online crowd funding campaign to achieve her dream.
She is doing it through the website www.ketto.org. She looks forward to scaling Everest during 2019 season and April 15 is her deadline to generate around Rs 30 lakh needed for the summit. Nahida is in touch with Transit Adventurers for undertaking the expedition.
She belong to middle class family and have set eyes on a big dream. Mount Everest, at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) is the world’s highest mountain and a particularly desirable peak for mountaineers. More than 4,000 people have scaled the summit since Sir Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first conquered the mountain in 1953. Hundreds have also perished. Apart from technical hazards and physical ability, it is the cost of scaling mountain that discourages many from attempting.
The typical cost when climbing the Everest with a Western agency is $45,000 and above. With a local Nepali operator it can be between $25,000 and $40,000. The cost includes the permit fee of $11,000 for the peak.
Twenty three year old Nahida Manzoor is a trained mountaineer having completed all mountaineering courses. She had completed her Basic Mountaineering Course and Advance Mountaineering Course (ABVIMAS) from Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM). She has also done Special Mountaineering Course and Method of Instructions both from NIM. She has so far scaled Mount Deo Tibba-Manali with a height of 6001 meters and also Friendship Peak of Himachal Pradesh with a height of 5289 meters. In Kashmir she has scaled Mount Mahadev and Mount Tatakooti. “With the group the expedition will begin on April 9 from Kathmandu and it will take approximately 50 days to get to the summit and back to Kathmandu. “I will be one of the very few Indians to climb Everest from the route on the Southern Side in Nepal”, a message from Nahida reads on the website.
Nahida says that when she was a 10-year old she had set her sights on the Mount Everest and one day she will achieve her dream.
“It is my dream and I have been harboring it since last many years. I have set sights on this campaign and I am hopeful that I will be able to generate enough funds to undertake the summit. If I will not be able to generate enough funds then I have set my sights on Mount Kilimanjaro which is the highest mountain in Africa,” she said.
Nahida said that adventure activities among the women in Kashmir are also picking up and each day more and more are joining the trend. “When I started there were hardly any women who went for the expeditions, trekking and not to think about undertaking training courses in mountaineering. Now the things have changed and I am seeing more and more girls joining adventure sport,” she said.
