Online Reporter
KATHMANDU. — A renowned Nepali mountain guide has broken his own world record for the most summits of Mount Everest, after scaling the world’s tallest peak for the 32nd time.
Kami Rita Sherpa, 56, known as the “Everest Man”, was leading clients up the 8,849m (29,032ft) peak on Sunday when he set the new record.
On the same day, Lhakpa Sherpa, 52, known as the “Mountain Queen”, also broke her own record for the most ascents by a female climber, after her 11th Everest summit.
This climbing season has been especially busy, with a record number of permits issued to Everest aspirants and delays in opening the route to the peak.
Nepal’s tourism department has congratulated both climbers for the “historic achievement”.
So did Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah, who said that the climbers had “once again written history”.
“Such historic success can only be achieved through unwavering courage, rigorous self-discipline, and honest dedication to one’s work,” he wrote on X.
Kami Rita Sherpa first summited Everest in 1994 and has made it to the peak almost every year since. Some years he’s even scaled it twice.
Lhakpa Sherpa has a startling life story — to the outside world she holds the record for climbing Mount Everest a staggering 10 times, the most of any woman. But behind the scenes, her personal life has been dangerous and fearful.
While conquering the world’s highest mountain, she says she was enduring domestic abuse from her husband — including during their 2004 descent from Everest.
Now based in America, she has raised three children, supporting them by working in a grocery store and as a cleaner.
Her life — on and off the mountain — has been made into a Netflix documentary, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, directed by Lucy Walker. Sherpa is proud of the film.
Eyes blazing, she tells the BBC: “I want to show people women can do it.”
What is perhaps surprising about her record-breaking climbs is that she does so with little training.
Climbing Everest can be fatal — there have been more than 300 deaths in the region since records of mountain climbing there began a century ago.
So it’s vital to be in peak condition.
In the film, we see Sherpa keep fit by walking in the Connecticut mountains. But she also carries on with her normal working life, out of necessity.
“You’re an exceptional athlete,” Walker tells Sherpa during our interview. “Very tall. Very strong.
“People underestimate it. It’s an unbelievable accomplishment that you can climb Everest from doing your day job.”Sherpa responds: “I’m not good with being educated, but I’m very good with the mountains.”
Born in 1973 to yak farmers in the Nepalese Himalayas, she was one of 11 children.Crucially, she was raised in an area where education for girls wasn’t a priority — she carried her brother to school for hours through the hills, but wasn’t allowed inside.
Things are now improving in Nepal—women’s literacy rocketed from 10% in 1981 to 70percentage by 2021.
But Sherpa’s lack of education left lasting consequences—she’s still unable to read. Things people take for granted, like using a TV remote control, are difficult for her. Her son Nima, born in the late 90s, and daughters Sunny, 22, and Shiny, 17, help bridge the gaps.
With no schooling, by the time she was 15, Sherpa was working as a porter on mountain expeditions — often as the only girl. Through her climbing work she was able to avoid a traditional arranged marriage. But life got difficult when she became pregnant after a brief relationship in Kathmandu.
An unmarried mother, she was too ashamed to return home.
Still climbing when she could, she met and fell for Romanian-US mountaineer and home-renovation contractor, George Dijmărescu.
He’d escaped Romania, under dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, by swimming across the Danube river.
Dijmărescu had already forged a new life in the US when he and Sherpa married in 2002, settling in Connecticut, where they went on to have Sunny and Shiny.
But the couple’s relationship fractured when Dijmărescu became violent, Sherpa says.— BBC
Mathew Masinge