SHIMLA: After defying death during the Annapurna expedition in Nepal, the gritty Indian mountaineer Baljeet Kaur (28) from Mamlig Panjrol village of Solan district in Himachal Pradesh is roaring to climb the mountains once again.
"I cannot live without mountains and this year I will try to scale the 7,075 meter Mount Satopanth peak of Uttrakhand and after that next year I will try for the above 8000 meter peaks," says Baljeet Kaur who had scaled the Annapurna 1 on April 17 evening around 7 pm without oxygen and while descending from the summit had gone missing.
Narrating the death-defying experience, Baljeet Kaur told TOI that two of the Sherpas accompanying her for the summit were inexperienced and were going for the summit for the first time. She said that on April 16 at 3 pm they had started climbing towards the summit and after climbing all night they reached 100 meter near the peak at around 10-11 am on April 17.
"We all were feeling very exhausted and on April 17 around 6-7 pm we finally completed the summit. After that I started feeling hallucinated , as I was neither having oxygen nor water and I immediately asked the Sherpas to start descending from the summit," she said.
She said that she was having the delusion that a girl on the summit was asking her to stay there only.
"Even the Sherpas were having the hallucination and they first argued with each other and then with me. Later they left me alone and I started the downward journey on my own," she added.
Baljeet Kaur said that while descending from the peak all alone she even slept for 1-2 hours and then again woke up to resume her journey towards Camp-IV. On April 18 morning at around 7.30 am, she thought of sending the SOS for her rescue and immediately she connected the Garmin device with her mobile phone to send the SOS as by then she already was without oxygen and water for around 48 hours.
"I told the team members at the Camp to contact the insurance company for my rescue and5 hours later they contacted me and I was rescued," she said, adding that when she was admitted at the hospital the doctors found that she already had stage-1 frostbite and luckily without any complication she will be cured in one month.
Baljeet Kaur returned to India on Thursday and on Saturday she will reach ger village Mamlig Panjrol with her parents. She said that she could speak to her parents only after getting admitted in the hospital in Nepal.
When asked whether her parents would allow to go mountaineering again, she says that she will persuade them to allow it. She says that mountains have always given her a lot and Annapurna has given her a new life. Saying that she cannot live without mountains, Baljeet said that in September-October this year she will scale Mount Satopanth in Uttrakhand. “After that I will go to the mountains above 8000 meters,” she said.
