Climbing Commando Brings Hope to India’s Truly Downtrodden: Girls

TIKLI, India —  The mountains have left their mark, from the craggy lines around her eyes from exposure to extreme temperatures to the discoloration on her jaw from the scraping of a badly fitted oxygen mask.

But hands that narrowly escaped frostbite four years ago remain steady when Santosh Yadav, the only woman to have climbed Mt. Everest twice, points to the mountains where she plans a mountaineering school for young people.

“Every child has potential given the right opportunity. I hope the school will give young people the exposure to develop their skills,” she said.

Over the last decade, 30-year-old Yadav, who grew up in an Indian village where most girls did not study beyond fifth grade and married as soon as they reached puberty, has become a symbol for the women of her region.

She has climbed mountain peaks, become the first woman military commando in India, met presidents and prime ministers, received awards and recognition and has entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the first and so far only woman to have twice climbed Everest, the highest peak in the world.

Yadav is an exception in a society where traditional ideas and prejudices still shape most women’s lives and limit their opportunities.

India has had a woman as premier, but female politicians like the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, daughter of the country’s first prime minister, usually need the patronage of a powerful male relative to succeed.

India is a country where boys are preferred to such an extent that girl fetuses are sometimes aborted and baby girls killed. As a result, it is one of the few countries in the world with more men than women --a ratio of 1,000 to 927, according to the United Nations.

Baby girls are fed less and educated less than their brothers. Boys are three times as likely as girls to find access to education. Hoping to reverse this trend, Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral announced a program in August to give 500 rupees ($14) to very poor families after the birth of a daughter.

Ten years ago, when Yadav was fighting to break out of centuries- old taboos, such initiatives were few and far between.

Today, she works at a military base near New Delhi, just 40 miles from Rewari, the village where she was born, the only girl among five brothers.

When her parents sent her to a village school, where she sat on the floor, a male relative told her father it was a sin to spend scarce resources on a daughter.

Yadav later persuaded her parents to send her to college to study economics. She admits the last thing on her mind at that time was education. She was desperate to get away.

A gathering of clansmen had told her parents that too much education would ruin her for marriage. All her cousins were married and had babies by their teens.

But her father, the owner of a small brick factory, doted on his daughter and was willing to be persuaded when she begged to be allowed to study further.

While sketching the Arravalli mountain ranges after classes one day at her college in northwestern India, Yadav saw some male students rock climbing. She was fascinated when the climbers told her they saw no reason why a woman couldn’t join in.

During the summer vacation, Yadav defied her father to take a basic course in mountaineering.

“In a society where education for women was frowned upon, involvement in an adventure sport was unthinkable. But I was adamant. I thought what a boy could do, I could do too,” Yadav said.

In 1986, while her family fretted and fumed, she went to the Himalayas to study advanced mountaineering and was the top of her class.

In the next seven years, Yadav climbed a number of challenging peaks, including Saser Kangri, Mt. White Needle, Abi Gamin and Mt. Everest in the Himalayan ranges as well as Mt. Fujiyama, Japan’s highest peak. Public recognition followed.

“As my exposure grew, I grew as a person and I began to think of what I could be,” she said.

In 1990, Yadav signed up with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a paramilitary organization that helps protect India’s snow-covered border with Tibet and China. She trained as a commando and became a commissioned officer, heading a group of 138 fighting men.

Four years later, while still with the border force, Yadav married a longtime boyfriend over strong resistance from her conservative family because the man was from a lower caste. She had broken too many boundaries by then to care about what others thought.

Yadav said she also has had to face opposition and harassment in the border force, because she is a woman and because of jealousy over her fame.

She plans to quit the military and turn private entrepreneur. She and her husband are working to start a dairy farm at Tikli, about 40 miles southwest of New Delhi, and use the income to build a mountaineering school.

The site is just a few miles from her home village.

“I have come a full circle,” she said.