Vasumathi: Scaling new peaks

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The occasion is her daughter’s wedding. In her nine yards Kancheepuram silk sari worn the traditional way, Vasumathi Srinivasan looks every bit the archetypal middle-aged south Indian housewife. But give her a pair of crampons (metal spiked boots worn for walking on ice) or a jummar harness for climbing on a rock-face, and she accomplishes feats that go into the Limca Book of Records.

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Bangalore-based Vasumathi created a world record last year by leading the first-ever all-women desert safari expedition, riding a camel for 35 days across the Thar Desert and the Rann of Kutch. She was part of the first group of women to step into the Siachen glacier region with Bachendri Pal (the first Indian woman to climb to the top of the Everest). She also led the first army women’s expedition to Kullu Pumori peak (21,500 ft) in Himachal Pradesh in 1996, and has been to the Everest base camp, which is beyond 18,000 ft, five times already.

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This intrepid woman is excited about the formation of the Women’s Adventure Network of India (WANI), with Bachendri Pal as president, to promote adventure sports – trekking, surfing, rock climbing, rappelling and cycling – among Indian women of all age groups. “Not just for breaking records, but also for staying fit or engaging in exhilarating activities which provide a sense of achievement,” Vasumathi clarifies.

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As a child, she remembers, she was always curious to see what was “on the other side of the hill” when she was taken on picnics to Nandi Hills, a popular day-trip destination for Bangaloreans. Such was her fascination for climbing that as a schoolgirl in 1968 she hid in the park toilet at Nandi Hills so that the family would miss the bus to Bangalore and she could climb downhill. Her mother had to accompany her!

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Today, Vasumathi’s daughter Smitha joins her on expeditions and the duo got into the Limca Book of Records as the first-ever mother-daughter team to go mountaineering on Himalayan peaks. Besides Bachendri Pal, Vasumathi has gone on expeditions with the internationally famous mountaineer Doug Scott.

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While a student at Mount Carmel College, she joined the National Cadet Corps (NCC) and was part of the first-ever rock climbing camp in south India in 1971; she got an A-grade in the advanced course of the Central Government Mountaineering Institute.

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Last year, she set up a company called Adventure Zone, which organises adventure camps for schoolchildren. The idea is to help channel the children’s energy into activities that are exciting and impart new skills and self-confidence.

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“Today’s children are heavily into computer games, and don’t know the pleasures of seeing different kinds of flowers, birds, insects, butterflies, coloured rocks, and the beauty of the wilderness. Unless they are exposed to nature’s variety and develop a fascination and respect for environment, they cannot understand, much less help tackle, the ills of climate change,” she says.

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Any unforgettable experiences? “Plenty,” she says. When river rafting was first introduced as a sport in India, she went rafting on the Beas with Bachendri Pal. After losing their oars in the rapids the raft got caught in a fast current and drifted towards a drop of 30 ft, even as TV cameras were filming the expedition from the ban! Some members, including the guide, were panic-stricken, but Vasumathi not only jumped into the water, she also carried a male member of the group on her back and swam to safety. The others stranded on the raft were finally rescued with ropes thrown from the shore.

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In 1981, she led the first Karnataka Ladies Expedition to the Kala Nag peak. The group pitched a tent to store all provisions for the trip and spent the night at base camp in the Garwal region of the Himalayas. The next morning, they found the tent torn to shreds, all the provisions scattered and destroyed, and the footprints of a bear on the snow. Luckily, the bear did not attack the tent in which the group was sleeping.

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“Mountaineering is tough, but it helped us understand the hardships that our jawans face in remote, hostile terrain while guarding our country,” she says. For that trip Vasumathi had left her two-year-old daughter and 10-month-old son in her mother’s care.

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It is not just the thrills and chills, Vasumathi points out, but there are important lessons that adventure sports impart that can come handy in daily life. Once when they were just 50 ft short of the 21,000-ft Banderpunch peak in the Garwal region of the Himalayas, they had to abandon the climb because of heavy fog.

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“It was far more important to be safe than successful. So, even failures teach us valuable lessons,” she says. Listening to these tales, one realises that the so-called “ordinary” women can gain self-confidence and improve their physical fitness by choosing activities seen as “unconventional”.

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