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Nivedita Choudhary became the first woman from the IAF to summit the Mt Everest
"It was truly a top-of-the-world feeling. Not a cloud in the sky, no obstruction between the horizon and me... Sitting on the platform I had made with my ice-axe, I had a clear, 360-degree view. I knew my life would change after that moment." Life did change. Flight Lieutenant Nivedita Choudhary became the first woman from the Indian Air Force (IAF) to summit the Mt. Everest — and the first woman from Rajasthan to achieve this feat. "The one hour I spent on world's highest point etched my name in history. It will always be the best moment of my life," she says with a smile. In October 2009, Choudhary, an IAF officer who had just joined the squadron in Agra, chanced upon a broadcast calling for volunteers for the IAF's women expedition to the Everest. She volunteered for the extreme adventure activity "just like that."
Just a year earlier, she became the first and only IAF officer to date to scale the 7,557-metre Mt. Kamet, India's highest climbing peak. Recalls the 27-year-old, who went to a government girls' school in Jaipur, "Kamet was more eventful than Everest. The weather was very bad. There were no ropes and the route was full of hidden crevasses. Half way, we considered aborting the attempt. I had an Army 'jawan' (soldier) and an airman with me. As the senior-most in the team, I had to take a call. We could have been lost in the snow or have fallen into a crevasse since we couldn't see a thing. But I thought, let's do it. I was thinking a successful ascent would erase the memories of the previous attempt in 2005 when the IAF team had been caught in severely turbulent conditions and had to be rescued. I am happy I took the risk." The Kamet expedition was a precursor to the Everest mission. Choudhary had undergone a month-long training in basic mountaineering in Darjeeling in November 2009. On the basis of her performance, she made the cut for the Everest expedition. The Everest expedition was flagged off a day after she turned 26 on April 13, 2011. She was the youngest woman on the team — comprising eight women officers, one medical officer and eight male soldiers — Choudhary gives a blow-by-blow account of the attempt. "We were at south col on May 20. The weather was initially bad, with wind speeds of 40-50 knots. Our team leader, Group Captain Dahiya, was in two minds. We started walking from the summit camp (8,000 metres) at 10 pm after the wind calmed a little. My Sherpa didn't take oxygen. After two hours, his body gave up. I looked back and there was no one behind me. My spare oxygen bottle was also with him," she recalls.
She feels it's easier for women (to scale such heights). It's more a mindgame than entailing physical strength, and women are always mentally more stable and can take more stress than men. She had completed her Bachelor's degree in technology from Jaipur's Arya Engineering College but engineering was always her second career option. Her heart was set on being an officer in the Air Force. "I was in the NCC Air Wing in college and I got a chance to fly a little bit. It entailed just one or two sorties in a Super Dimona aircraft, but I decided I wanted to be in the Indian Air Force," she elaborates. Today, she is a navigator in the transport fleet and flies the AN-32 aircraft. She is the first person from her family to join the defence forces. Her father, Prabhakar Singh Choudhary, 53, was a farmer in Mukundgarh village, in the Nawalgarh tehsil of Jhunjhunu district, before he shifted to the state capital in order to ensure that his three children, two daughters and a son, had access to better education and employment opportunities. Since her father couldn't afford expensive private education, the two girls, Nivedita and her younger sister, Deepika, went to the Gandhi Nagar Government Girls' School. Choudhary is all set to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, i.e peaks that are more than 8,000 metres high.
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Undeterred,
she decided to trace her way back a little and look for him. It was
only after an hour of descent that Choudhary found him. "I gave
him oxygen and waited another hour before the two of us began our
ascent. At 3 am, I was at the balcony, the only place where climbers
can stand straight — otherwise it's all inclines of 60-70 degrees.
Finally, at 8 am, I had conquered the world's highest mountain
peak," she says.