'A Fire Over Mount Everest': Why India’s first female expedition was rife with conflict

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 1984, Siddharth Kak landed a ringside view into an expedition to Mount Everest as part of a film crew—at the heart of all the action, yet at a safe distance from it. Or so he thought.India was looking to put the first woman on the summit. The newspaper advert that Kak, then 36, stumbled upon seemed too good to be true.

A guided trip to the highest mountain in the world and an opportunity to find his feet in the world of filmmaking. Kak knew he had to go, ready or not.Kak revisits all the drama that ensued, both on and off the mountain, in his new book, A Fire Over Mount Everest. “Forty years ago, Everest was dangerous and nothing like the assisted climbing of today.

Not more than 200 people had set foot on the mountain, so it was at its most challenging during those days,” he says.The expedition ended in success after Bachendri Pal reached the summit on 23 May, only the fifth woman in the world at the time to do so. She was showered with adulation on her return and became a household name. But it wasn’t the same for her teammates (Sharavati Prabhu, Rita Gombu, Chandraprabha Aitwal, Rekha Sharma, Dr A, and P) women as hardy and determined, who put in equal effort on the mountain, only to be denied the summit due to circumstances.

Most held on to the bitter memories that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.“What the expedition primarily needed was communication, instead, what it had was command,” Kak, 76, recalls. Then, there were the struggles of the filming team. Just one of the four had any mountaineering experience.