Where in the world is Mira Rai?

She made headlines in 2014: a young woman from the mountains of eastern Nepal had just won the 50km Himalayan Outdoor trail race.

Mira Rai was 23 then, the only Nepali female in the race. She had no training, no proper shoes, just a cotton t-shirt and shorts, and did not even know what trail running was. Two months later, helped by organisers who saw her talent, she won three more international trail races.

Mira Rai has been running all her life. She grew up running up and down from her village to the market town in Hile across the Arun River, carrying sacks of salt or rice with her mother. The farm did not grow enough food to feed her five siblings.

At age 12, Mira was already carrying 12kg on her back, while her mother carried 60kg on the two-day roundtrip from Bhojpur to Dhankuta.

One day in 2004, while carrying rice on the trail she was caught up in a Maoist ambush of a Royal Nepal Army patrol. She escaped as bullets whizzed by. 

At 14, she became a child soldier for the Maoist militia. Although she did not see action, after the ceasefire in 2006 she was sent with other guerrillas to the demobilisation camp in Sindhuli.

There was not much to do at camp, and she excelled in running, taking part in the 5 and 10km marathons in the National Sports Championship. But because she was still 17, and a minor she was ‘disqualified’ by UNMIN peacekeepers, and went on to finish high school.

Today, ten years after winning her first race and being catapulted to fame, Nepal’s most famous runner is here in Colorado raising funds from sponsors all over the world for her Mira Rai Initiative, earning money on the side, and running every weekend on trails in the Rockies. 

In 2020, grounded by the lockdowns and while recovering from a knee injury, she led anti-pollution drives in Kathmandu and launched the Mira Rai Initiative helping other youngsters in athletics.

The program trains up to six Nepali trail runners a year, which from November will be conducted from her new Training Centre on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Among runners she has trained in the past are Sunmaya Budha and Humi Budha Magar, who have gone on to win in international trail running championships.

“First I ran with my mother to support the family, then I ran for my country, now I run for myself and others like me,” Rai told us from across the table at a Nepali restaurant in Denver.  

Trophies have followed Mira Rai wherever she runs. She won gold medals in the 180km Mustang Trail Race, the 56km Selloronda Ultra Trail in Italy in 6 hours 36 minutes and 30 seconds, and came second in the 83km Trail of Heroes also in Italy in 9 hours and 16 minutes.

She came first in the Hong Kong 50km MSJK HK ultra race and won a silver in the Kings of the Hills. In 2015, just after the earthquake back home, she won the Mont Blanc Sky Race, and held up the Nepal flag as she broke the record. 

In 2017 she won gold again in the 120km Ben Nevis Race on Britain’s highest hill in 14 hours 24 minutes, a new record. That same year, she was also selected to be the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

A documentary about her, Mira, was shown to much acclaim at the Banff and Vancouver film festivals, and she is featured in the Lily Dyu book Fantastic Female Adventurers.