At 12.20 a.m. on May 23, N Muthamizh Selvi, a teacher of Japanese from Tamil Nadu, was among the first people to summit Mount Everest for the day. Nobody scales the peak during this hour though. Summit ascents usually occur at three and four in the morning after mountaineers begin from the fourth camp at Everest about 12 hours before.
“I had no choice. We were running out of oxygen in my cylinder and the cold winds were relentless. I had to begin summiting and head back down soon to ensure I could return alive,” she says.
Through the dark and the biting cold, Muthamizh Selvi could only remember her foreign co-mountaineer’s hysterical cries after her summit and return to Camp 4. “This is not a game. It is literally, ‘do or die’’. I had to power on. How else would I see my children?” she asks.
