Meet the first twins to climb Mount Everest

"On Everest, pretty much every step we took was dangerous; one step wrong, you're dead. That gave us this sense that death is nothing," says Tashi Malik the younger of the twins. Aside from Mt Everest, the girls have conquered the peaks of Mt Kilimanjaro, Africa; Mt Elbrus, Europe; Mt Aconcagua, South America; Carstensz Pyramid, Oceania and Mt Mckinley, Alaska. They are in the process of acquiring funding to scale Mt Vinson, Antarctica's highest peak this December. Should they succeed, they will be the world's first twins to climb all seven peaks.

Surprisingly, the girls tell us that they haven't met with failure yet; Nungshi attributes this to the fact that they "do not see any mountain as too small or too big. We respect each mountain for what it is". Then there is their cautious approach, intensive research, rigourous training at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) and the fact that they "don't give up easily".  

They flew into Nepal in March, took ten days to walk to the Everest Base Camp in April. They spent around two months getting acclimatised, and finally summitted Mt Everest at 7.30 am on 19th May 2013, after four strenuous days. The 8,850-metre peak would be particularly challenging for the girls who had previously only scaled 5,000 metres; it would also be the first time that they would need to use oxygen. Their path to the summit meant crossing 10,000-foot crevasses on the Khumbu Icefall, surviving on water and soup between Camp I and Camp II (as anything more made them nauseous), the 70 degree Lhotse face at Camp III, the bitter winds in Camp IV (also known as the Death Zone), setting off for the summit in the dark, proceeding without guides when their sherpas went missing in action, the three never-ending ridges before Hilary Step, the avalanches in the night, fellow climbers turning back just hundred metres from the top, losing fingers, toes and even their lives... But it's not all doom and gloom up in the mountains, "the view of the rising sun was too beautiful to describe and brought us hope," the girls recall.   

The duo have been dedicating their climbs to the fight against female foeticide. To them, "It's not about climbing the highest peak, it's about proving that women can do anything they set their minds to". They hope that their achievements will convince people that daughters are capable of great things. Samina Baig, the first Pakistani woman to climb Mt Everest, was with the twins when they surmounted the world's highest peak. The girls tell us that the high rate of female foeticide in both countries inspired the trio to term their mission 'Gender Equality—Fight against Female Foeticide'. Tashi shares, "I think that day, all the girls who were in our expedition made it, while a few guys turned back. We felt so proud to be girls". Also, given the sour history between the two countries, "unfurling the Indian and the Pakistani flags together, on top of the world, was a big moment for all of us; we dreamt it and we did it".

As army kids, they travelled across India. They would often trek up the hills with their dad and just sit there drawing the mountains, but never imagined that they would grow up to be mountaineers, as there are none in their family. Athletes right from the start, they played hockey in their school days. Unlike most Indian kids, who decide that they want to be doctors or scientists, even before they know what it entails, the twins had no goal. "We wanted to explore where our passion lies," explains Tashi. In 2009, their dad—a firm believer that exposing yourself to extreme conditions and physical challenges will reveal your strengths and weaknesses—informed the Gemini-cusp twins (born on 21 June 1991) that he had enrolled them for the Basic Mountaineering Course at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, Uttarkashi. "A spell was cast on us by that very first course" they tell us. They went on to do the Advanced, Search and Rescue and Method of Instruction courses merely "for educational purposes". 
Their dad "was taken aback" when they told him they wanted to climb Mt Everest sometime in 2010, "but he didn't say no!" Convincing their mother that they were born to go past the vertical limit was another story altogether. She threatened to commit suicide if they so much as spoke about it again. It was on their way to the Method of Instruction Course in 2013, when one of their instructors yelled out "here come our twin Everesters," that their mum's attitude thawed. She has supported their dream ever since and even took a gold loan to facilitate their Everest climb.  

Climbing mountains is no easy task, but it helps to have your sister along, especially when you're trying to climb the world's highest peak. Tashi took a break when they reached this area called the balcony, but there was no sign of Nungshi; not that it was easy to differentiate between the climbers, "who all looked the same with their goggles and  masks". When Nungshi showed up 15 minutes later, she was practically walking with her eyes shut. "I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was dying," she recollects. Nungshi didn't realise that her oxygen regulator had malfunctioned. "The sherpas were telling me that I would die and that I should go down. It was quite frustrating. But Tashi was a driving force. She reminded me of our pact to step together on the peak. Her trump card was that mum had taken a gold loan," says Nungshi. Tashi claims that she felt she was doing something wrong by pushing Nungshi to proceed, but Nungshi thanks her for it today. In the meantime, Samina's brother Mirza Ali decided to head back down. So Nungshi proceeded using Mirza Ali's oxygen cylinder. In the meantime, their Sherpas had gone missing, but the trio decided to just follow the other climbers.

And after the joy of unfurling the Indian flag on the peak, came the descent which was "more difficult than climbing up". Nungshi had a near death experience on the Hilary Step where she sat down to rest awhile on her way down, as a Korean climber made his way up. Despite all her reading, and warnings from other climbers that resting could lead to unconsciousness and death, "I just couldn't help it" she tells us. A fellow climber on his way down spotted her and shook her awake. For a while, she didn't know where she was. She thought she had died and gone to heaven and started to panic about how her sister would feel and how her family would react, until a voice in her head commanded her to put one foot ahead of the other. And that's just what she did till she reached Tashi again. By the time they reached base camp, they had lost almost 12 kilos, were struggling to breathe and Tashi thought some of her brain cells were dead. "This climb was more about exhaustion, dehydration and lack of oxygen—we learned a lot from it". 

The best of friends and the worst of enemies, Tashi credits a generous 90% of her mountaineering achievements to her sister, "Without her, I don't think I would have taken up this challenge in the first place". Nungshi agrees,"In mountaineering, your mental endurance matters more than your physical endurance; a constant source of inspiration—my sister (in my case)—can be a great boost; it helps you take that initial step and then to take step after step. In a sport like mountaineering, where some climbers have snapped the ropes of others, it is good to know that someone has my back". 

Predictably, funding for a sport like mountaineering is a challenge in India. And while their father does his best to garner corporate sponsorship, he has ended up shelling out pretty much all his personal savings on their various missions. The Aditya Birla Group, the Uttarakhand CM and the Haryana goverment have also contributed to their adventures. The girls used borrowed equipment for all their climbs, including Mt Everest. "We did not have the best of gloves and used boots borrowed from NIM. We didn't even own a carabiner, which does not cost a lot," they say. Things as simple as not having a separate drum (that serves as a toilet) for the women, makes things harder for them in the male-dominated sport. Luckily for them, Seven Summits, the agency they climbed with is known for their logistics and provided separate washspaces for the women climbing Everest. 

"Come what may, follow your passion," is their dad's advice and that is exactly what they continue to do. For every person who told them mountaineering was not for girls, there were others who egged them on, impressed with their stamina and determination. "In fact people who climb with us call us the Rajdhani-Shatabdi express, because we're really good." 

All the things that the girls have learned from the mountains will fill a book or two, but if I have to boil all their eloquent thoughts and feelings down to a few words, what I'm left with is — self-knowing, acceptance, humility and fearlessness. Watching the bodies of people you know and admire being taken back down the mountain or hearing that their bodies were never found is not easy. But when you choose to climb mountains, you learn to accept it.

The girls, who have studied journalism, were interested in dance and working for the UN (inspired by their dad's work) at some point. But these ambitions faded away once mounataineering came into the picture. They now hope to study adventure-sports nutrition and build careers that "circle around the mountains" they love. Perhaps they will start taking groups up into the mountains themselves. Only time will tell. Like most people who love life will tell you, "It's not the destination that matters; it's the journey."