Kerala woman’s journey to the peak of Mount Everest

Safrina Latheef, Kannur native and a resident of Qatar, was a banker and a baker before she turned to mountaineering, a long-term desire of hers, and has arguably become the first woman from Kerala to scale the over 8,000-foot-high Everest peak.

Describing the momentous feat as one of the “toughest” things she has done in her life till now, Safrina says not just physical fitness but mental strength was also very important to make the climb. She reached the Everest base camp on April 19, began the climb on April 28, started the final push for the summit on May 12, and reached the top on May 18.

“It is a mental struggle, as we see a lot of unexpected things like avalanches, rock falls, and dead bodies of climbers who tried to scale the summit with the same aspirations and dreams as us,” she said in a voice note from Nepal.

However, reaching the peak is worth all that gruelling effort because of the view from there, said Safrina, who is in her late 30s.

“You are on top of the world, the clouds. There is nothing above you that is the feeling you get. It is difficult to describe it. You have to experience it,” she said.

But, her decision to take off her goggles to experience the view with her naked eyes proved a bit costly as she got blinded by the snow and had to make the descent with poor vision and was briefly hospitalised for it, she said.

Her efforts

Giving details of the effort she put in to achieve the feat, she said it was during the COVID-19 pandemic that she and her husband realised the importance of health and physical fitness.

“We became health conscious, joined a gym, and began running. It was a long-term desire of mine to do adventure trekking. So, after we became healthier, when we had time, we climbed Mt Kilimanjaro (5,895 metres) in Tanzania with some friends,” she said in the voice note.

Since then, her only thought was to climb the highest peak on Earth — Mount Everest which stands at 8,849 metres.

“For that, we have been training for the last four years. We found a trainer and asked him to train us specifically to climb Everest. We planned to scale Everest last year, but, unfortunately, my husband suffered a training injury. “This year again he suffered a training injury, but I said I cannot wait any longer and decided to climb it alone. However, my wish was to climb it together with my husband,” she stated in the voice note.

As part of the training to climb Everest, the couple climbed Mt Aconcagua in Argentina which is close to 7,000 metres, but it was a rocky mountain. “In order to understand how it was to climb a snow mountain like Everest, we climbed Mt Elbrus (5,642 metres) in Russia. We also went to the Everest base camp in Nepal to understand the trekking culture,” she said.

She said she was lucky to have a life partner like her husband — Shameel Musthafa — who is a surgeon at Hamad Medical Corporation in Doha, Qatar, as they both think alike and have the same priorities.

Now that she has returned alive from Everest, she has no immediate plans to climb any other high peaks.

“But, I want to complete the seven summits sometime,” she said, referring to the highest mountains on each of the seven traditional continents.

Safrina, who has been residing in Qatar for the last 25 years, said, “We need to find our own happiness and we cannot depend on others for that.”