Empowered and Inspired by hiking along with Widow Everest Summiteers
Since the beginning of expeditions to the Great Himalayas, all the climbers have partnered with many of the Sherpas to scale some of the tallest mountains in the world. From Edmund Hillary who was the first scaled Mount Everest the very first time with Tenzing Norgay, to this day where climbers from around the world walk beside these sherpas to scale the mountains. With high risk of making the path for the climbers there are definitely many casualties that the sherpa’s deal with.
This is a story of two of many sherpa widows who lost their husbands climbing the Mountains. Fura Diki and Nima Doma, two sherpas from the Khumbu region had lost their husbands in the climb to Mount Everest.
Fura Diki’s husband died during fixing ropes for his foreign clients on Everest in 2013.
And in 2014, Nima Doma’s husband was killed, along with 15 other sherpas, during the avalanche near Everest base camp.
Generally, the widow women were expected to mourn the loss of the husbands and renounce colorful clothing, jewelry, and were even sometimes deemed inauspicious during the festival times.
However, these two sherpa widows planned on changing this. With the thought of changing this tradition and honoring their husbands who passed away climbing Everest, they attempted to summit Everest and were successfully able to do so in 2019.
Hurdling through many challenges in their lives from the physical training they took to scale Mt. Everest and the emotional toll they took after losing their husbands it was a tough journey for them as they passed through the highs and lows of women discrimination.
Today these two women are guiding smaller treks to the Himalayas and are proud that they were able to honor their husbands by walking the path their husbands once walked.
Our Last Frontiers Team is cooperating with these two brave sherpa women to organize a trip to the Everest base camp, and will soon have it up on our website. Make sure to stay subscribed to get notified about the trip.
The Widows of the Everest
Time Stamp: Nima and Fura Sherpa (14:30)