Driving young Nepalis up the wall

Kalpana Maharjan is the first female journalist to climb Mt Everest from both the Nepal and the China sides. But the Lalitpur native doesn’t just climb mountains for the sake of breaking records.

In 2014, Maharjan was attempting Mera Peak in the Khumbu region when she was struck by severe cerebral oedema that put her into a coma for eight days.

“After regaining consciousness I believed that God had given me a second life,” recalls Maharjan. “So I decided that I would live the rest of my life for the public good.”

Her first summit of Everest was in 2018, when Maharjan was 34. She climbed from the South Col route with four other Nepali women journalists. Exactly a year later, she summitted again, this time from from the North Col route, naming her expedition 'Back to Everest: A Campaign Against Child Marriage.' 

Now, Maharjan combines her activism with training young Nepalis in sports climbing.

Maharjan runs awareness programs against child marriage and human trafficking in schools in South Lalitpur: Godavari, Imadol, Dukuchhep. Her first goal is to make the district of Lalitpur free of child marriage. “My whole goal is to show kids that there is more to life than getting married,” she says.

She does this by introducing and training students in Sports Climbing which includes Speed climbing, Lead climbing, and Bouldering.

“There are only one or two Nepali athletes dedicated to the sport. So it is possible to train for 3 to 4 years and become an international level climber,” says Maharjan, who trains 150 young athletes, some as young as 7.

There are under-14 climbing tournaments, and the idea is to start them young on the walls since their future competitors in the West start as soon as they can walk.

Maharjan is committed to the sport. She completed judging and route-setting training from the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, is the president of the Bagmati Province’s Sports Climbing Association and is fund-raising to build a climbing wall in Imadol.

For the moment, Maharjan’s students use the Pasang Lhamu climbing wall in Dhumbarahi, twice a week and daily during vacations.

“The kids are excited about the wall in Imadol, which would allow them to train more often,” says Maharjan. “Interestingly, the ones who are scared of heights often perform the best.”

Besides training on the climbing wall, Maharjan also counsels her students about their career plans, and hopes that her story inspires them to achieve any goal they want.

With programs such as ‘Tij on the Wall’ during the annual festival for women, Maharjan makes sure the parents are involved too, and that they understand and feel what climbing is like.

BALANCING ACT

Maharjan has always had to balance her passion for mountaineering, activism, and sports climbing with the duties and expectations of her family. “My son helps out a lot, he is very independent and busy, but convincing my parents and husband was a lot of work,” she admits. In fact, her husband only found out that she was going back to climbing Everest after her coma through the news.

“I understand their concern. After all, the doctor had given me only a 15% chance to live,” she says. “I couldn’t tell them I was going back to the mountains.”

Kalpana’s father even threatened to disown her. But she had already set her mind to it, and was willing to risk any opposition from her parents, and even separation.

While training for her first attempt, she would wake up at three in the morning to get all of her housework done. Then she would leave the house to train at a climbing wall in Balaju, and then go to her journalism job or meet potential sponsors for the climb.

“As the eldest daughter-in-law in a traditional Newar household I had a lot of chores when I got home in the evening,” she remembers.

As part of the Jyapu farming community, Maharjan is also proud that after working as a journalist producing videos, on the weekends she is at her family’s paddy field in Dhapakhel with a doko on her back.

Eventually, Maharjan’s goal is to have her trainees win medals in international competitions, and develop a reputation for Nepal in the sports climbing world.