Meet the first visually impaired Indian woman to scale Everest, from a village in Himachal Pradesh

Indian Express

23-05-2025

Amar Chand began his week as he has for decades — overseeing the green peas and apple plantations at his one-acre farm in a village deep inside the Hangrang Valley in Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh.
But a video clip he received turned the mundane Monday morning memorable. It was of his daughter, Chhonzin Angmo, 29, hoisting the Tricolour atop Mt Everest. She was flanked by her sherpas, Dandu Sherpa and Om Gurung, and Army veteran Lt Col Romil Barthwal (retired), the expedition team leader.
What made Angmo's feat even more special was that she became the first visually impaired person from India – and only the fifth such mountaineer in the world — to conquer Everest.
Before her, there was Erik Weihenmayer from the United States — the first visually impaired person who scaled Everest in 2001 — Austrian Andy Holzer (from North Col route in Tibet) in 2017, Chinese Zhang Hong in 2021 and American Lonnie Bedwell (2023). Angmo, however, is the first visually impaired woman summiteer.
'Stepping on the summit of Mt Everest, my first thought was how each step counts in our journey, whether one is abled or specially-abled. This is only a step in my dream to instill willpower in every specially-abled person. If we have the willpower, nothing can stop us and my next target will be the highest peaks in each continent,' Angmo told The Indian Express.
'My role model is Helen Keller, whose books and biography I read as a student. My father, too, is a role model… There were times when people would taunt me for being visually impaired. But my father and my family supported me in this journey. If I, or they, would have been disheartened, we could not have taken a step forward in life,' she said.
'Our village, Chango, is like an oasis in the cold desert; the only green patch amidst yellow mountains of the Valley, fed by two glacier streams and the Spiti river. Our daughter is like the oasis in our world, and to see her climbing Mt Everest was a special moment for the whole village,' Chand, 76, said.
Angmo's younger sister Kesang Yangchen, who lives in Mohali, was quick to add: 'The yellow hills above our village are called Moonland by the tourists and locals, too. To see Angmo atop Mt Everest is like her reaching the moon for all of us.'
The second youngest among five siblings, Angmo was in Class 3 when her vision got severely impaired following a 'medicine allergy', according to her family.
Chand's brother, Gopal, said the family only got to know when her school teacher brought it to their attention after noticing that Angmo was struggling to write. 'The next day, we rushed to a hospital 210 kilometres away, at Rampur Bushahr, which referred us to another hospital in Shimla,' Gopal recalled.
But there was no relief. As the years passed, Angmo lost vision in both her eyes completely.
'We visited Chandigarh, Dehradun and other cities to find a cure but Angmo slowly lost her vision. There were financial struggles, too, but the family did whatever it could to support Angmo,' Gopal said.
In 2005-06, Chand and his wife Sonam Chhomo got Angmo enrolled at Leh's Mahabodhi School and Hostel for Visually-Impaired Children, run by the Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre. She later completed her graduation from Miranda House in Delhi.
In 2016, Angmo completed a basic climbing course from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports, Manali, where she climbed the 5,289-metres Friendship Peak. She followed this up by climbing multiple peaks in Ladakh and went on to become a part of Operation Blue Freedom, an expedition of specially-abled persons to Siachen Glacier, led by an Armed Forces veterans' group, Team Claw, in 2021.
With every climb, Angmo's passion increased. It was a meeting with Skalzang Rigzin, who became the first Indian civilian mountaineer to scale Mt Everest without supplemental oxygen, that she began dreaming of conquering higher peaks.
Rigzin, who met Angmo in Leh through her schoolmate and mountain guide Tsewang Norbu, was impressed with her 'willpower and willingness'.
'Through Norbu, Angmo showed me pictures of her Siachen trip and I could sense that she had the willpower to conquer higher mountains. Tagda chalti thi (She walked with a strong gait). That's my first memory of seeing her climb in Ladakh,' Rigzin, 43, said. 'The way she would rope up with the guide and use her senses to judge things was commendable. She scaled Kang Yatse 2 (6,250 metres) in less time than a normal mountaineer,' he said.
Rigzin, also the president of the Ladakh Mountain Guide Association, said that Angmo used the fixed rope route, a tried-and-tested method when climbers attempt to scale 8,000 metres-plus peaks.
'I would tell her about the Jumar technique while ascending on a fixed rope line using coordination of body, hands and ascender to climb the rope… Before Mt Everest, she called me asking, 'yeh equipment theek hai (is this equipment right)?' I wished her luck, she inspires people like us through her willpower,' Rigzin said.
Last year, Angmo, who is employed with the Union Bank of India, received the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities.
In April this year, after the Union Bank of India decided to sponsor her expedition, her preparations to conquer Everest got underway with mountaineering firm Boots & Crampons, based in Delhi-Hyderabad, along with Pioneer Adventures of Nepal.
Boots and Crampons CEO Romil Barthwal and founder Bharath Thammineni met Angmo in April and, for the four weeks that followed, she first scaled Mt Lobuche (6,119 metres), before starting the acclimatisation cycles from Camp 1 (6,065 metres) to Camp 2 (6,400 metres) at Mt Everest and back. She later progressed to Camp 3 (7,200 metres) and Camp 4 (7,920 metres).
'When Rigzin told us about Angmo, we were excited. When we met her in the first week of April, the first thing that impressed us was how she knew the basics of mountaineering like an expert,' Thammineni, who has scaled five 8,000 metres-plus peaks including Everest, said.
'Of course, she required the assistance of the sherpa and me or Romil, but then she had to do the climb herself. Sometimes, she would judge from the tension in the rope and the step impressions in the ice or rocks,' Thammineni said.
With challenges like the Khumbu Icefall and multiple ladder crossings over crevasses during the climb, the team devised some in-house signages for Angmo. 'The ladder crossings are done by a single climber… We would guide her using trek poles to tell her where to put her feet,' Thammineni said.
As she mounted her final assault, Angmo's elder brother, Lama Karma Yeshey, a monk at the Sherabling Monastery at Baijnath in Himachal Pradesh, immersed himself in prayers. 'Whenever she goes for a summit, she takes prayer flags with her and tells me to pray for her too,' Yeshey said.
Upon her return, a simple — yet special — treat awaits Angmo. 'She will ask our mother to get her the best apples from our small orchard,' Yeshey said.