Arunima Sinha is the first Indian female amputee who climbed Mount Everest.
Arunima Sinha was a national level volleyball and football player. She boarded the Padmavati Express train at Lucknow for Delhi on 11April 2011 to take an examination to join Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). Thieves entered into general coach of the train. They wanted to snatch her bag and gold chain. When she resisted them, they pushed her out of the train. She fell on the railway track. Another train on a parallel track crushed her leg below the knee. On 18 April 2011, she was brought to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for further treatment, spending four months at the Institute. She was provided a prosthetic leg free of cost by a private Delhi-based Indian company.
But Arunima’s grit and determination which saw her become a national level sportsman came to the fore once again. Inspired by the story of cricketer Yuvraj Singh’s battle with cancer, she told herself, that she could do anything she wanted if she set goals for herself.
“My left leg was amputated. A rod was inserted in my right leg, from knee to ankle, to hold the shattered bones together. What was the most impossible dream I could set for myself? I decided to climb Mount Everest,” recalled Arunima.
She fought her disability with a grit that surprised even the doctors. She began walking with her new prosthetic leg in just two days, when most people take weeks just to get used to it.
She took training from the first Indian woman to climb Mount Everest at Uttarkashi camp of the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TSAF), Bachendri Pal.
Over the next year Arunima climbed Island Peak (6150 meters) and Mount Chhamser Kangri (6622 meters) in her preparation for her assault on the world’s highest peak.
And then at 10.55 am on 21 May 2013, just two years after she had lost her leg, she stood atop the summit of Mount Everest, the national flag in hand,as part of the Tata Group-sponsored Eco Everest Expedition. She took 52 days to reach the summit. She was the first Indian amputee and the first woman amputee in the world to have conquered the giant summit.
Arunima Sinha has written a book “Born again on the mountain”, launched by Prime minister of India Narendra Modi in December 2014.
