In her bid to get to the base camp of Mount Everest, Ms Shubashini Vijayamohan had to endure and push forward through a relentless blizzard and the unforgiving cold.
For the 32-year-old, the coveted journey was very much a family affair. Her father Vijayamohan Subramaniam, a 65-year-old retired policeman with diabetes, had set the climb as his birthday goal last May.
The group – father, daughter, her husband and a family friend – spent four months meticulously preparing for it. They researched the route, climbed stairs daily, did weight training and practised breathing techniques to adapt to the oxygen-scarce altitudes.
The trek spanned 12 days, with an average of 10 hours a day spent walking. The day before reaching the base camp was the most harrowing – when a blizzard turned their path into an indistinguishable white sheet.
“I couldn’t see anything,” Ms Shuba recalled. “It was just us, walking forward. It was nothing like I ever experienced. You need to prepare yourself for unpredictable weather, high altitudes, and the fact that there’s no guarantee you’ll even make it to the base camp.”
Her experience wasn’t unlike that of Ms Sindujah Nair, 21, this year.
Low oxygen levels at the high altitude made her almost quit her goal of reaching the base camp.
She set out to accomplish her climb for personal reasons. She lost her uncle in a tragic motorbike accident in 2023, and decided to honour his memory by fulfilling his own dream of completing the famed trek.
Having climbed smaller peaks like Mt Ophir in Malaysia and Mt Batur in Indonesia, Ms Sindujah, a financial consultant, left no stone unturned for her Everest mission.
She spent six months training rigorously – running, weight lifting, hiking up Bukit Timah Hill, taking stairs instead of lifts – to build her endurance. But nothing could prepare her for the bone-chilling cold of the Nepal mountains, which plummeted to -2 deg C in addition to dangerously low oxygen levels.
At the halfway point of her climb, Ms Sindujah feared she would be sent back down the mountain, like many other climbers struggling with altitude sickness. Somehow, she said, she found the strength to continue.
“When summit day arrived, it demanded everything I had – gruelling hours of climbing steep craters, each step feeling like a battle. It was the hardest day of my life,” she said.
“And when I reached the summit, I was simply in tears. I had done something extraordinary, and I honoured my uncle. It was a very emotional moment.”
