Spotlight on Leading Women of Nepal – Pasang Lhamo Sherpa

Passing Lhamu Sherpa rarely needs introduction in Nepal. She was the first ever Nepali woman to set foot atop Mt Everest  and that is saying a lot considering how mountaineering expeditions was largely a male domain even 40 years after Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and Sir Edmund Hillary conquered Everest in 1953. By 1993, 16 female mountaineers from different countries had climbed atop it. It was only on April 22, 1993 when our own daughter of the the Himalayas conquered it and went on to write a history.

An ordinary individual from an ethnic Sherpa background suddenly became a household name in Nepal. The saga of Pasang Lhamu’s life and death added a new perspective to women’s role in Nepali society. For a country that was undergoing a socio-cultural revolution, for many girls growing up during that time, Pasang Lhamu’s feat would become a milestone – they would later learn about her in their school curriculum and also aspire to follow her footsteps.

The national heroine was the only girl born into a family of four sons. She grew up in the small village of Surke, near Lukla, the base of the Khumbu region and gateway to Mount Everest. When Pasang Lhamu was a teenager, she joined her father, a mountain guide, on many Himalaya expeditions.

Her brothers and father speak of her fortitude and strength – one of her brothers say that she was “like a man.” But Pasang Lhamu, instead of proving that she is no less than a man, wanted to establish a new identity for women and becoming a telling example that gender roles could be switched when it came to mountaineering.

Although she lost her life during descent, she had done what no Nepali woman had dared do before her. And in doing so she inspired every woman in the country to dream, to dare and follow their own dream; to break the stereotypical male dominated society and pave their own path.