From starting her mountaineering journey at a very young age to becoming the first Indian woman to scale five 8000ers, 30-year-old Priyanka Mohite’s sheer determination and hard work were instrumental in realising her mountaineering goals. In 2010, she started travelling to the Himalayas after completing her basic mountaineering course, following it up shortly with an advance mountaineering course.
Mohite, who climbed Mt Everest at 20, recalls, “I became the first Indian woman to climb Mount Makalu, the world’s fifth-highest mountain, in 2019. Then in 2020, I climbed Mount Annapurna 1.”
Mohite has received several accolades during her journey, and is now all set to embark upon her next expedition. “My next climb is Mt Dhaulagiri, which is the seventh highest mountain in the world. I am eagerly waiting to climb and experience the beauty of the peak in the recent spring expedition,” she shares.
A scientist by profession, Mohite knows well how to devote her time towards her passion. “By passion, I am a mountaineer but I am a scientist by profession. Now, over the years I have understood that how I can focus on my training as well as in my 8 to 5 job. Since I am currently planning to climb one more mountain so I am preparing and training hard for it. In the morning 5am to 6 am I work out and during evening hours too around 6pm to 8pm. So that’s the kind of training I am doing right now while fulfilling my professional commitments as well. Though my expedition is nearby I am working out twice a day but throughout the year, I worked out in the evening time only and during weekends, I went for trekking as well,” she explains.
Speaking upon her journey as mountaineer, Mohite said, “It’s been more than 13 years since I started climbing and the journey has been exciting for me. Initially, I faced a lot of difficulties because it’s not only about climbing, there are other things that are involved like sponsorships and all. Still the struggle is there in terms of sponsorship and some sort of comparisons. But with good support of my parents, I was able to cross all the hurdles and climbed.”
Hailing from the Satara district in Maharashtra, Mohite believes that there are many women who are really capable in doing some amazing things but because of social norms and lack of support they are not able to follow their dreams. “In any field you have to do a lot of hardwork and get along with the right kind of people who can guide you for the future thing. You should have a really good support from your family as well. If you have support of your parents, then I think half of the things are done. Then you can fight against all the social norms. Just keep going on and you would definitely find the path where you can succeed,” she shares.
Though Priyanka considers her father as her role model due to his ‘never-give-up attitude’, she drew inspirations from two great mountaineers. “Reinhold Andreas Messner and Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner inspired me alot in my mountaineering journey. While Gerlinde is an amazing climber, Reinhold is the one who climbed 14 peaks of 8000 metres without oxygen,” she adds.
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