Statesman News Service

LEH, Nov. 25: Two years ago, at 19, Tsering Ladol became the first girl from Jammu and Kashmir to conquer Mount Everest. Given the fact that she hailed from the difficult and land-locked region of Ladakh, the Everest conquest should have brought her recognition and laurels.

But two years on, Ladol hasn’t been given due recognition by the Jammu and Kashmir government. Nobody from the Jammu and Kashmir youth services and sports department approached her or even honoured her.

Hailing from the Changthang area, she belongs to the Changpa nomadic tribe scattered in the remote Changthang plateau in Ladakh and Tibet. The tribe mostly relies on its cattle, comprising yaks and Pashmina goats, for their livelihood in the plateau where temperatures plummet to several degrees below zero in winter. Living at an altitude of 11,000 to 25,000 feet, Ladol, the eldest of seven brothers and sisters, was first spotted by an NCC teacher living in Leh when she visited Changthang a few years ago. She asked Ladol’s parents if she could take Ladol with her to Leh. 

As her parents agreed, the young Ladakhi girl found herself growing up in the town. She was put in a school, joined the National Cadet Corps and excelled in mountaineering that comes naturally to her. “I belong to a poor family and doubled up as herder in my area.
“There was no scope for education and the area was cut off,” Ladol said. She also scaled the Siachen glacier with the Army and excelled in mountaineering with little resources and no institutional training. Ladakh, that witnessed the Kargil war in 1999, has no mountaineering institution to train youngsters “who want to be mountaineers but there is no formal training. For scaling heights like that of Mount Everest, one has to know the basics of mountaineering, hence the requirement for specialised training,” believes Ladol, adding that without training, the talents go untapped. She thinks there should at least be more expeditions that can be planned for the young here.

“In Jammu and Kashmir, you shouldn't have any expectations from the government,” said a veteran mountaineer and Padamshree awardee, Sonam Wangyal, who scaled the Everest in 1965. Wangyal said he was promised by the state political leadership that funds would be allotted to spread awareness about mountaineering in schools. The funds are yet to come.