Women of Nepal

Susmita Maskey

Team Leader & Expedition coordinator of "First Inclusive Women Sagarmatha Expedition 2008 - Spring"

Born on November 19th 1979, in Kathmandu

Since her childhood Susmita used to love 'climbing'. Whenever she saw 'heights' of soil or straw, or whatever might be, she liked to climb it and look at down. She said she wanted to see from a top what there was behind that 'height'.

 She was born as the second child of a Newar family in the old town of Kathmandu in 1979. The first child of her parents expired before her birth. Susmita was left in the care of her mother's elder sister who lived close to her house and had only three sons but no daughter. Susmita grew up with her daai (cousin brothers), which made her a 'boyish' girl who liked playing football and going hiking. Neither her foster parents nor her own parents had restricted her from doing any activities. She was lucky enough to grow up in a free environment, which majority of Nepali women cannot expect to have. Although she got a dream of becoming a pilot she took her job as a teacher as soon as she finished her School Leaving Certificate examination. While teaching in a school she continued her study in Padma Kanya Campus where she got degrees of intermediate and bachelor in the fields of English, Dance and cultural tourism.

Though she had never thought that she would become a mountaineer even when she read stories about Edmund Hillary and Nepali alpinists, it seems that she had a fate to meet with Himalayas. She came to know about the Female Outdoor Leadership Training organized by the Nepal Mountaineering Association through her aunt who works for the same organization. In April 2003 she had a free time to participate in this 19-day-long training. Susmita trekked to the Annapurna Base Camp with other fifteen young women. Despite it was her first trekking she could have walked just as Sherpa women from Solukumbu or Helambu. This experience gave her confident and as soon as she came back from the training she decided to attend the basic mountaineering course that was held in the Everest Base Camp.

While staying in the Everest (Sagarmatha) Base Camp Susmita met a lot of renowned international and national climbers, including Apa Sherpa, Pemba Dorje Sherpa and Peter Hillary who is a son of Edmund Hillary and came to cerebrate the golden jubilee of the first successful climb on the Everest. After experiencing hard trainings for mountaineering those climbers looked like just 'real heroes' for her. When media people who came from countries like Japan, Korea, France to cover the event asked her during the interview if she was doing the mountaineering training to climb the Everest she answered "Yes" and so this became her first commitment to climb the highest mountain in the world.

In September 2003 Susmita participated in the First Asian Women Joint Expedition to Mt. Nilekha (6,159m). In this expedition, in which fifteen women from four countries including two Nepali women attended, Susmita worked as a base camp manager as well as an interpreter. Immediately after this expedition ended she got an offer to work as a model for British mountaineering equipments company Sprayway and scaled the Island Peak (6,160m) for photographing on October 21st the same year. This became her first reaching the summit of a Himalayan mountain. She described about her experience during this first conquering the summit, "My body was so thin and small that I was almost blown off by a strong wind. It was snowing and weather was not good but, thanks to three experienced colleagues, I could have done it."            

After scaling the Island Peak toward spring season of 2004 Susmita intensively exerted herself in trainings. During the 33-day-long advanced mountaineering training course in Langtang Region she successfully scaled her second peak Yala in January 2004 and the Island Peak for the second time in May. Susmita said, "During those days I spent whole my time in trainings. It was neither for a job nor because I was told by somebody but it was as if mountains were inviting me. I participated in those trainings without thinking about what I will do next."

In the end of 2003 Susmita got an offer to join the expedition to climb the Everest. In the beginning there were five members, including two Newar women Susmita and Moni Mulepati, however, Moni and another member soon left a team and Moni joined another Everest expedition. With only two other members who had their own jobs most of the time, Susmita alone ran around to raise funds for this Peace Everest Expedition. Since they had no big patron she went to ministries, embassies, hotels, banks and so on to ask with their supports to her expedition. However, she got little response but for from local Newars. She remembers with her gratitude that locals in her Newar community gave her notes of 5 rupees and 10 rupees for her expedition. Because they could have collected only a third of funds they had needed for all the three members to climb the Everest they decided the only woman member, Susmita, would scale it.

Two-month-long expedition started in March 2005. At the same time three Nepali teams were in the Everest base camp. The main focus of Nepali media was on two Newar women, Susmita and Moni, both of whom were from Newar community in the Kathmandu Valley and were trying their first scaling to the world highest mountain. Any of the two who could have reached the summit earlier than another would be the first Newar woman and the fifth Nepali woman who had scaled the Everest. Susmita and her team stayed in the base camp for nearly one and a half months, while waiting for a permission from the government to go above the base camp. Everyday she saw many climbers going up; however, her team didn't get permission due to the unknown reason. Even after two other Nepali teams got permission her team didn't.

It was only fifteen days before ending of her expedition when her team finally got permission to go up from the government. Due to uncooperative behavior of a Sherpa guide who was supposed to support her, she had to walk alone from the base camp to the camp four. He didn't support her even at the time of reaching the summit. A Sherpa guide left her behind at the Hillary Step, just 40 meter away from the summit, telling that he had never taken 'another jati (nationality)'. She had no way but to turn back. Susmita expressed her feeling at that time, "I was just watching other climbers going to the summit. I wept for more than 45 minutes at the Hillary Step. I just didn't want to return as a 'loser'. I thought I would rather to die there. An American climber I met there told me to come back again for the next trial but I was so mentally shocked that I felt it was like a nightmare." She also felt that she was not in a climbing community where male domination is still strong.

Her experience in the Everest was so bitter that she lived in a completely depressed mood for the next three months after she came back from her first Everest expedition. She had to sell her equipments to pay her debts. She saw attitudes in the same persons had changed from before. She explained how she could have overcome her hardship, "I even could not cry at my house because I didn't want to make my family members worry about me. But one day I finally broke out in tears in front of my family, which made my mind refresh. Then my family supported me and I thought I should start again for the sake of my family."

Susmita then again began to move. In 2006 she involved in activities of an NGO that worked for 'Destination Manang 2007' and worked as a trekking guide for a Japanese travel agency. She also rejoined her campus and completed her master degree on English. It was in July 2007 when two Nepali men approached her to form the expedition team of Nepali women to climb the Everest. Since the beginning she devoted herself to making a team and raising funds. Their plan was to form a big team of ten to fifteen women from various castes and nationalities. In the beginning sixteen women came to attend but in the end ten women, all of whom were unmarried in the age of 17 to 31, remained. Only two of them have experiences to have climbed high mountains. Some members even have never been to higher places than 2,000 meter above sea level.

As the name of the expedition 'First Inclusive Women Sagarmatha Expedition 2008 - Spring' indicates a team was inclusive one, consisting of two Newars, three Sherpas, two Chettris, one Brahmin, one Gurung and one Danuwar. In Nepali society it is really difficult for such a team to achieve something in a unified way but Susmita and her team did it. This time as well fund raising was not so easy. To ask supports Susmita met nearly 500 persons, including Prime Minister Koirala and Maoist Chairman Prachanda. She described about her experience, "Many people didn't believe us. I felt there was no idea in this society to invest for the Nepali climber." However, this time fortune smiled upon her and her colleagues. They could have some major sponsors, such as World Food Program, BP Koirala India-Nepal Foundation and Embassy of Denmark.

A couple of months before the expedition eight of ten members, including Susmita, stayed together at one of member's house for two months, with the purpose to strengthen unity among members. They did daily trainings together and lived together just like 'sisters'. "We were united tightly to such a degree that we didn't want to be separated but wanted to stay together for all the times. We were inspired and motivated by each other. There was no conflict among members," said Susmita.

Between May 22nd and 25th in 2008 all of ten women members and two Sherpas in her team succeeded in reaching the summit of the Everest. Before their expedition only seven Nepali women had conquered the Everest. Susmita expressed how different this expedition was from the former one, "This time I was in a big mental pressure because we had many big sponsors and because I had to coordinate the whole expedition. But what was different from the former expedition was that as our expedition advances we could have got more corporations from all kind of community. Although there were still people who were discouraging us, our team was strongly united." She remembers she had neither fear nor excitement but was prepared for anything during the expedition. "When I reached the Hillary Step I just recollected my experience during the last expedition in 2005. After returning from that expedition I used to see pictures of the summit and imagine myself on the top of that summit everyday. I was so familiar with the scenes I saw on the summit that when I reached there I felt as if I had come to the place where I have visited many times before."

She added; "I started this project to fulfill my dream of reaching the top of the highest peak in the world but by the end of the expedition I could not celebrate my success till I got all nine members on the top of Everest and back to the Everest Base Camp safely. On reaching top, the only wish I made to goddess Chomolongma was the success of all ten of us. After the expedition, I am more confident and strong and ready to deal with any challenge and inspire and encourage more women to these kinds of self empowerment activities".

After returning from this historical expedition for Nepali women she decided to work for the environment in the Himalayan region through an NGO that she had formed with her climber friends. Susmita experienced all kinds of hardships, such as gender discrimination and racial discrimination after entering into the world of mountaineering, which she never had to face in her community before. But she said her will to climb will never vanish.