Shailee Basnet became a mountaineer because she was fascinated by the challenge, by the lofty heights. She had not been involved in any sport in her early years but made up for it rather well. &quot;The most difficult moment in my climbing experience was when I was climbing Mount Aconcagua in Chile. Although it is a simple climb, I suffered frostbites and had to stop. I could not reach the top,&quot; she says with an air of regret. Mount Aconcagua is 6,961 metres high, the highest mountain outside Asia. It takes nearly 10 days and 3,000 metres of ascent to reach the summit, often in extremely cold weather. Yes, it is as simple as that.

The mountain people of Nepal are known worldwide for their excellent climbing skills. Every year, they set up walking trails and guide thousands of trekkers and mountaineers from all over the world across the Himalayas. When the hiking season starts, men leave their houses for months at a stretch to become porters and guides. For many families, this is their only source of income. Traditionally, women wait in the villages and take care of livestock, crops and families. But then, not all traditions last for ever.

Basnet is no stray exception. Other Nepalese women are following her footsteps on treacherous surfaces. She happens to be the coordinator of The Seven Summits Women Team, a group of seven women from different backgrounds. They met after an all-female ascent of Mount Everest in 2008 and decided to band together. Their aim was to train more women in the country to fight gender discrimination by engaging in outdoor activities. Mountaineering became a tool of empowerment.

In 2009, they started travelling to climb the seven highest mountains of the world, from the Andes to Antarctica. More than ice, cold or altitude, expenses were their biggest enemy. The Nepalese government, several mountaineering bodies and companies stepped in and the magnificent seven set out to conquer the heights.

And, they succeeded. Less than 350 people in the world have achieved the feat, only 51 out of them women.

With the motto &lsquo;Together we reach higher&rsquo; firmly entrenched in their minds, they regularly visit schools to share their expertise. The team is actively working to get more women on the mountains. &quot;We are training a team of women in their early twenties. They are all survivors from human trafficking. The aim is to provide them with good skills and enough qualifications to find employment,&quot; Basnet tells WION.

Basnet laughs off the commonly-held belief that women are weaker than men. &quot;Let me tell you a story. One of us happened to be the lone woman in an expedition team. The men in the team said she ate more than a man and could carry more weight than one,&quot; says the climber. Incidentally, Nimdoma Sherpa, one of the members of The Seven Summits Women Team, climbed Mount Everest when she was 17 years old.

Basnet faced a lot of hurdles when she started out. People around her were apprehensive when she decided to become a professional mountaineer. Mountaineering in Nepal is roughly a century old. It began with westerners hiring local people for their expeditions. Back then, it was more common for men to get out of their houses and earn a living. &quot;I think that the concern comes mainly because people are not used to seeing young women acting as mountaineering guides,&quot; she believes.

Himalayan women are just as hardy as their male counterparts. Equally used to high altitude, they are physically strong and used to hard labour. They carry loads up and down from the mountains all year long, firewood, hay for animals and basic supplies.

Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita is one such woman. She grew up in the Nepalese town of Lukla, the gateway to Mount Everest. In a conversation with National Geographic, the 31-year-old climber reminisces about her childhood when she would see groups of foreigners walking uphill and slowly disappearing towards the snow-capped peaks. Her parents died when she was 15 years old and she had a younger sister to feed. So, she decided to become a professional mountaineer. She trained successfully at the Khumbu Climbing Centre to become Nepal&rsquo;s first woman mountaineering instructor.

&quot;When I said I wanted to climb mountains, many people discouraged me, saying that it was the role of men to climb mountains to earn a living for the family,&quot; said Pasang to National Geographic. Akita proved them wrong.

In 2014, she succeeded in summiting the 8,611-metre-high K2 (Mount Godwin Austin), the second highest mountain in the world. K2 is considered one of the most difficult ascents. The weather is often so bad that it is impossible to see the top for the whole season. According to adventurestats.com, one climber out of four dies while trying to summit the peak. National Geographic honoured Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita with its 2016 People&rsquo;s Choice Adventurer of the Year award.

Work has been pouring in for Nepalese women mountaineering guides, business is picking up. According to Basnet, &quot;the number of women travellers is increasing. They usually feel more comfortable with women guides and so do families. We have also noticed that when it comes to group of young students, both their parents and their educational institutions feel more confident if there are women guiding them&quot;.

However, Nepal, as on date, has only one certified female instructor and only two more are training for their certification.

Convincing families and communities to allow women to train regularly and become professional mountaineers is still a challenge. Traditions take time to change. The way is still long and the climb is steep.

(WION)

Guiding climbers has long been a man?s trade in Nepal, but now local women with rucksacks on their backs are changing the story

Shailee Basnet became a mountaineer because she was fascinated by the challenge, by the lofty heights. She had not been involved in any sport in her early years but made up for it rather well. "The most difficult moment in my climbing experience was when I was climbing Mount Aconcagua in Chile. Although it is a simple climb, I suffered frostbites and had to stop. I could not reach the top," she says with an air of regret. Mount Aconcagua is 6,961 metres high, the highest mountain outside Asia. It takes nearly 10 days and 3,000 metres of ascent to reach the summit, often in extremely cold weather. Yes, it is as simple as that. The mountain people of Nepal are known worldwide for their excellent climbing skills. Every year, they set up walking trails and guide thousands of trekkers and mountaineers from all over the world across the Himalayas. When the hiking season starts, men leave their houses for months at a stretch to become porters and guides. For many families, this is their only source of income. Traditionally, women wait in the villages and take care of livestock, crops and families. But then, not all traditions last for ever. Basnet is no stray exception. Other Nepalese women are following her footsteps on treacherous surfaces. She happens to be the coordinator of The Seven Summits Women Team, a group of seven women from different backgrounds. They met after an all-female ascent of Mount Everest in 2008 and decided to band together. Their aim was to train more women in the country to fight gender discrimination by engaging in outdoor activities. Mountaineering became a tool of empowerment. In 2009, they started travelling to climb the seven highest mountains of the world, from the Andes to Antarctica. More than ice, cold or altitude, expenses were their biggest enemy. The Nepalese government, several mountaineering bodies and companies stepped in and the magnificent seven set out to conquer the heights. And, they succeeded. Less than 350 people in the world have achieved the feat, only 51 out of them women. With the motto ‘Together we reach higher’ firmly entrenched in their minds, they regularly visit schools to share their expertise. The team is actively working to get more women on the mountains. "We are training a team of women in their early twenties. They are all survivors from human trafficking. The aim is to provide them with good skills and enough qualifications to find employment," Basnet tells WION. Basnet laughs off the commonly-held belief that women are weaker than men. "Let me tell you a story. One of us happened to be the lone woman in an expedition team. The men in the team said she ate more than a man and could carry more weight than one," says the climber. Incidentally, Nimdoma Sherpa, one of the members of The Seven Summits Women Team, climbed Mount Everest when she was 17 years old. Basnet faced a lot of hurdles when she started out. People around her were apprehensive when she decided to become a professional mountaineer. Mountaineering in Nepal is roughly a century old. It began with westerners hiring local people for their expeditions. Back then, it was more common for men to get out of their houses and earn a living. "I think that the concern comes mainly because people are not used to seeing young women acting as mountaineering guides," she believes. Himalayan women are just as hardy as their male counterparts. Equally used to high altitude, they are physically strong and used to hard labour. They carry loads up and down from the mountains all year long, firewood, hay for animals and basic supplies. Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita is one such woman. She grew up in the Nepalese town of Lukla, the gateway to Mount Everest. In a conversation with National Geographic, the 31-year-old climber reminisces about her childhood when she would see groups of foreigners walking uphill and slowly disappearing towards the snow-capped peaks. Her parents died when she was 15 years old and she had a younger sister to feed. So, she decided to become a professional mountaineer. She trained successfully at the Khumbu Climbing Centre to become Nepal’s first woman mountaineering instructor. "When I said I wanted to climb mountains, many people discouraged me, saying that it was the role of men to climb mountains to earn a living for the family," said Pasang to National Geographic. Akita proved them wrong. In 2014, she succeeded in summiting the 8,611-metre-high K2 (Mount Godwin Austin), the second highest mountain in the world. K2 is considered one of the most difficult ascents. The weather is often so bad that it is impossible to see the top for the whole season. According to adventurestats.com, one climber out of four dies while trying to summit the peak. National Geographic honoured Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita with its 2016 People’s Choice Adventurer of the Year award. Work has been pouring in for Nepalese women mountaineering guides, business is picking up. According to Basnet, "the number of women travellers is increasing. They usually feel more comfortable with women guides and so do families. We have also noticed that when it comes to group of young students, both their parents and their educational institutions feel more confident if there are women guiding them". However, Nepal, as on date, has only one certified female instructor and only two more are training for their certification. Convincing families and communities to allow women to train regularly and become professional mountaineers is still a challenge. Traditions take time to change. The way is still long and the climb is steep. (WION)

International Women's Day: Nepal's women mountaineers - faster, stronger, higher

Clad in a black hijab tucked carefully to fit the frame of her face, 37-year-old Shaheen (name changed) is busy jotting down notes in Persian. The room is dimly lit and it&rsquo;s a hot summer day in the Indian capital. She stops, her hands leave the diary to reach out for the calculator on the table. Five other veiled women sit around the table. They are speaking fluent Dari, one of the major languages spoken in Afghanistan. It is one animated conversation. 
 
Shaheen looks up and says, &ldquo;We have to prepare food for 250 heads tomorrow. We are trying to decide who makes what. This is our biggest order till date and we are nervous. If they like the food, we are going to make good money.&rdquo; 
 
The small room serves as an office for Ilham, a catering start-up run by six Afghan women, all of them single mothers living as refugees in New Delhi. The venture kicked off in 2015 with help from United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and its implementing agency ACCESS Development Services (ADS). Their aim is to help these women achieve economic independence by putting their culinary skills to use. 
 
&ldquo;The profit from our first order was 750 Indian Rupees ($11). It&rsquo;s a really small amount but it was extremely significant for us. That&rsquo;s how Ilham started,&rdquo; says Ziagul, co-founder of the catering service. The menu is Afghan only and the food is home-cooked. 
 
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kh5cwU-SrRY" width="560"></iframe> 
 
A widow and a mother of five, Ziagul came to India in 2011 after she started receiving death threats from the Taliban. Her husband was killed by unidentified men back in 2001 but she continued to stay at her home in Herat, Afghanistan. It was only when she realised that her daughters were in danger that she decided to move to India. 
 
&ldquo;My eldest daughter was a television reporter and my two younger daughters were child actresses in the Afghan film industry. The Taliban threatened us because they thought television was not a place for respectable women,&rdquo; she says. 
 
Ilham is like a mind balm for these ladies who have seen their lives ripped apart in a land that has constantly witnessed conflict since the end of the 1970s. 
 
&ldquo;The word Ilham means &lsquo;positive&rsquo;. After years of bloodshed and struggle, this is the only positive thing to have happened in our lives,&rdquo; says Shaheen, the lone interpreter in the group. She picked up Hindi by watching Indian movies, she tells WIONews. 
 
Shaheen used to teach at a college in Kabul before her husband was abducted by the Taliban. 
 
&ldquo;His friends say he was shot dead but I didn&rsquo;t even get to see his body. I had to take care of four children. I did have a job but the situation became worse when my in-laws asked me to marry my husband&rsquo;s brother. I refused and was tortured. And that&#39;s why I ran away with my children.&rdquo; 
 
After making her way to New Delhi, Shaheen sustained her family by working as a domestic help before joining Ilham. It has been four years since she arrived here. She hasn&rsquo;t been able to enrol her children in a school. 
 
&ldquo;The money was never enough. We barely managed to eat and pay our rent. It&rsquo;s kind of an irony that I had the best of education possible for a woman in that conflict-torn country and that my children are uneducated.&rdquo; 
 
But Ilham has filled her with renewed hope. &ldquo;Ever since I have joined the business, I see hope for them.&rdquo; 
 
Refugee life for Nadira (name changed), the youngest in the group, has been tough because she does not understand Hindi. While the other women praise her recipe of Afghan dumplings, Nadira talks about her family. 
 
&ldquo;I divorced my husband because he was abusive and a drug addict. Afghanistan is a hostile place for a separated woman. So, I decided to come to India with my daughter and younger siblings,&rdquo; she says. 
 
Unlike Shaheen, Nadira has had little education. Ilham is her first taste of empowerment. &ldquo;I see other women at Ilham as liberated Afghan women and that&rsquo;s what I want to be,&rdquo; she says. 
 
The Afghan ladies have attended workshops on enterprise development and teamwork. They have learned to&nbsp;deal with clients. Though the funding is non government organisation-backed (NGO-backed) at the moment, the women hope that Ilham will soon stand on its own feet. 
 
&ldquo;The NGO is an implementing partner of UNHCR and we have provided these women with the banners, visiting cards and raw materials. But the idea is to turn this into a self-sustainable venture. We are getting them used to running a business,&rdquo; says Aditi Sabharwal from ADS. 
 
The venture seems to be on the right track. In the past one year, Ilham has taken part in quite a few popular cultural festivals organised here. According to ADS, it is fast becoming a rage in various embassies in New Delhi to order food from there. 
 
Meanwhile, another good news comes in. It is a big one. It is an invite from one of the biggest hotels in New Delhi to cook in the hotel&rsquo;s kitchen. 
 
&ldquo;It is overwhelming. We are a little scared because it is a luxury hotel kitchen. But this opportunity shows Ilham is working. The aim now is to get more such orders so that we have enough money to expand our business and to save for our families,&rdquo; says Ziagul, who wants Ilham to transform into a restaurant, before getting back to work. 
 
Tomorrow is going to be very busy for these Afghan women. A lot is riding on their shoulders: a good future for them and their families. And, possibly, the hope of thousands of displaced people.

Breaking away from the stereotype of disempowered refugees, six women from war-torn Afghanistan are seeking to turn their fortunes around

Clad in a black hijab tucked carefully to fit the frame of her face, 37-year-old Shaheen (name changed) is busy jotting down notes in Persian. The room is dimly lit and it’s a hot summer day in the Indian capital. She stops, her hands leave the diary to reach out for the calculator on the table. Five other veiled women sit around the table. They are speaking fluent Dari, one of the major languages spoken in Afghanistan. It is one animated conversation. Shaheen looks up and says, “We have to prepare food for 250 heads tomorrow. We are trying to decide who makes what. This is our biggest order till date and we are nervous. If they like the food, we are going to make good money.” The small room serves as an office for Ilham, a catering start-up run by six Afghan women, all of them single mothers living as refugees in New Delhi. The venture kicked off in 2015 with help from United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and its implementing agency ACCESS Development Services (ADS). Their aim is to help these women achieve economic independence by putting their culinary skills to use. “The profit from our first order was 750 Indian Rupees ($11). It’s a really small amount but it was extremely significant for us. That’s how Ilham started,” says Ziagul, co-founder of the catering service. The menu is Afghan only and the food is home-cooked. A widow and a mother of five, Ziagul came to India in 2011 after she started receiving death threats from the Taliban. Her husband was killed by unidentified men back in 2001 but she continued to stay at her home in Herat, Afghanistan. It was only when she realised that her daughters were in danger that she decided to move to India. “My eldest daughter was a television reporter and my two younger daughters were child actresses in the Afghan film industry. The Taliban threatened us because they thought television was not a place for respectable women,” she says. Ilham is like a mind balm for these ladies who have seen their lives ripped apart in a land that has constantly witnessed conflict since the end of the 1970s. “The word Ilham means ‘positive’. After years of bloodshed and struggle, this is the only positive thing to have happened in our lives,” says Shaheen, the lone interpreter in the group. She picked up Hindi by watching Indian movies, she tells WIONews. Shaheen used to teach at a college in Kabul before her husband was abducted by the Taliban. “His friends say he was shot dead but I didn’t even get to see his body. I had to take care of four children. I did have a job but the situation became worse when my in-laws asked me to marry my husband’s brother. I refused and was tortured. And that's why I ran away with my children.” After making her way to New Delhi, Shaheen sustained her family by working as a domestic help before joining Ilham. It has been four years since she arrived here. She hasn’t been able to enrol her children in a school. “The money was never enough. We barely managed to eat and pay our rent. It’s kind of an irony that I had the best of education possible for a woman in that conflict-torn country and that my children are uneducated.” But Ilham has filled her with renewed hope. “Ever since I have joined the business, I see hope for them.” Refugee life for Nadira (name changed), the youngest in the group, has been tough because she does not understand Hindi. While the other women praise her recipe of Afghan dumplings, Nadira talks about her family. “I divorced my husband because he was abusive and a drug addict. Afghanistan is a hostile place for a separated woman. So, I decided to come to India with my daughter and younger siblings,” she says. Unlike Shaheen, Nadira has had little education. Ilham is her first taste of empowerment. “I see other women at Ilham as liberated Afghan women and that’s what I want to be,” she says. The Afghan ladies have attended workshops on enterprise development and teamwork. They have learned to deal with clients. Though the funding is non government organisation-backed (NGO-backed) at the moment, the women hope that Ilham will soon stand on its own feet. “The NGO is an implementing partner of UNHCR and we have provided these women with the banners, visiting cards and raw materials. But the idea is to turn this into a self-sustainable venture. We are getting them used to running a business,” says Aditi Sabharwal from ADS. The venture seems to be on the right track. In the past one year, Ilham has taken part in quite a few popular cultural festivals organised here. According to ADS, it is fast becoming a rage in various embassies in New Delhi to order food from there. Meanwhile, another good news comes in. It is a big one. It is an invite from one of the biggest hotels in New Delhi to cook in the hotel’s kitchen. “It is overwhelming. We are a little scared because it is a luxury hotel kitchen. But this opportunity shows Ilham is working. The aim now is to get more such orders so that we have enough money to expand our business and to save for our families,” says Ziagul, who wants Ilham to transform into a restaurant, before getting back to work. Tomorrow is going to be very busy for these Afghan women. A lot is riding on their shoulders: a good future for them and their families. And, possibly, the hope of thousands of displaced people.

Broth of hope: Afghan refugee women turn entrepreneurs

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International Women's Day: Nepal's women mountaineers - faster, stronger, higher

Broth of hope: Afghan refugee women turn entrepreneurs