Jamshedpur:
Premlata Agarwal is a 45-year-old housewife from Jamshedpur and the mother of two, and this summer, she is going to climb Mount Everest.
"Having stood up to the various tests, a mountaineer looks to the greatest challenge of them all - Mt Everest," said Agarwal, whose initiation into adventure sports came by chance and was subsequently motivated by Bachendri Pal, the first woman to climb Mount Everest.
Agarwal is set to arrive in Kathmandu on March 25 and return on June 1. She is being sponsored by the Tata group of companies. To prepare for her latest endeavour, she will undergo training in rope techniques, high altitude medicine, self-arrest and self-rescue, and climbing techniques at the ASTREK climbing wall. She is set to start trekking to Khumjung (12,398 ft) for acclimatization and will undertake map-reading training on March 31. From April 7 to 11, she will train in glacier-walking, traverse, ascent and descent on ice without ropes with ice axe and crampons/luster, and walking on a fixed rope.
Agarwal comes from a conservative Marwari family. She had first started visiting the JRD Tata Sports complex in an effort to encourage her daughters to play tennis and had herself opted for the hill-walking and mountain-biking programme organized by the TSAF in 2000. She has several expeditions to her credit, including the Island Peak Expedition in Nepal (20,600 ft) in 2004 and the Karakoram Pass (18,300 ft) and Mt. Stoc Kangri (20,150 ft) in 2006. Agarwal was also part of the first Indian Women's Thar Desert Expedition team in 2007 and has climbed the 19,300 ft of Mt. Killimanjaro in Tanzania, which is the highest free standing (volcanic) mountain in the world, under the leadership of Pal in 2008.
Agarwal recently told newsmen that the All Women's Thar Desert Expedition, which included a 40-day camel safari along the international border running through Bhuj in Gujarat, the Rann of Kutch, the Thar in Rajasthan, and the Wagah Border in Punjab, was recognized as a "national record" and had found a place in the Limca Book.
"I had participated with my elder daughter, and we became the first mother-daughter team to have achieved this feat across Thar," Agarwal recollected. "I would like to be the first from my state of Jharkhand to attempt Mt. Everest in the summer of 2011," she confidently said, adding that she, being supported by the family, was fully prepared - physically, mentally and emotionally - to step into the challenge zone.