Kullu girl Ishani proves her mettle in mountaineering once again

Abhinav Vashisht

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Kullu, October 25

Ishani Singh Jamwal from Pahnala village, Kullu, became the first Indian girl to attempt to scale Mt Cho Oyu (8,201m), sixth highest peak in the world, from the difficult south side through Nepal. She finally reached the height of 7,200m on October 19.

From battling strong gusts above 70kmph to staying put amid extreme weather conditions, she was the only woman amongst the climbers from all around the world to scale the maximum height of the extremely challenging south side of Mt Cho Oyu.

As a member of the ‘Pioneer Cho-Oyu Expedition 2022’, led by Piyali Basak of India, Ishani reached Nepal on October 6 for the expedition and was aiming to officially set a record by summiting Mt Cho Oyu from the Nepal side. Generally, Cho Oyu is attempted from the Tibet side.

However, due to bad weather, the entire team had to abandon the whole expedition on October 20.

As her first 8,000m-above peak climb, Ishani chose the unclimbed and the most challenging route as she wanted to attempt an over 8,000m-peak ascend from where nobody had ever climbed. She was optimistic, but the extreme weather conditions and the safety of the entire team made her descend from Camp 2.

The Pioneer adventure had also given her a certificate recommending her technical skills as ‘good’ for scaling Mt Everest.

The Pioneer group included Ishani Singh Jamwal (24) and Piyali Basak (35) of India, Csaba Varga (40) of Hungary, Qaisra Yasmin Saeed-Katdare (51) of the US, Ko-Erh Tseng (30) of Taiwan and Hu Tao (36) of China. Fourteen Sherpas also accompanied the expedition.

Ishani looks forward to scaling more heights in the future and gives credits to her mentors.