Climbers Are Being Poisoned On Everest. The Reason Will SHOCK You! | Kaamya Karthikeyan

In this episode of xMonks Drive, host Gaurav Arora sits down with Kaamya Karthikeyan — India's youngest female Everester, world record holder, and one of the most extraordinary young athletes in the world — for a rare long-form conversation about what it really takes to push past the limits of human endurance, again and again, from the time she was seven years old.

Kaamya Karthikeyan became the youngest female in the world to complete the Seven Summits — climbing the highest mountain on every continent — at the age of 17. She has summited Mount Everest, Mount Vinson in Antarctica, Mount Denali in North America, Mount Aconcagua in South America, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Elbrus in Europe, and Mount Kosciuszko in Australia. She has also skied 111 kilometres to the Geographic South Pole as part of the Last Degree expedition, becoming the youngest Indian and one of the youngest women in the world to do so. She is currently 18 years old and studying engineering at Shiv Nadar University. She is also a competitive ski mountaineer who has represented India at the Asian Championships and the Youth World Cup, and won medals at the Khelo India Winter Games and the National Championships. Ski mountaineering recently became an Olympic sport at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.

In this episode Kaamya talks about her Everest summit push — starting from Camp 4 in the middle of the night after 250 climbers had turned back, navigating whiteout conditions on the Lhotse Face, losing her expedition mitten at 8000 metres above sea level, and what her Sherpa did in that moment that she will never forget. She talks about skiing alone to the South Pole for 10 days with no landmarks, getting frostbite, being told by doctors to go home, and walking 8 hours with no guarantee she would be allowed to continue. She talks about the avalanche on Mount Trishul in Uttarakhand in 2021 that took the lives of six people she was close to, and how she processed that loss and went back to the mountains seven months later for the Denali expedition. She talks about the controversy around evacuation practices currently affecting the Himalayan climbing community and what it is doing to the relationship between climbers and the Sherpa community.

This episode is essential viewing for anyone interested in mountaineering, Everest, high altitude climbing, the Seven Summits, the Explorers Grand Slam, polar expeditions, the South Pole, ski mountaineering, adventure sports in India, mental strength, resilience, overcoming fear, dealing with loss, and the human capacity to keep going when everything says stop.

Kaamya Karthikeyan's story is one of the most remarkable sporting and human stories to come out of India in recent years. She started trekking at age 7 in Uttarakhand, summited her first 6000 metre peak at age 9 on Stok Kangri in Ladakh, trekked to Everest Base Camp at age 9, summited Kilimanjaro at age 10, Elbrus at age 11, Aconcagua at age 12 becoming the youngest girl in the world at the time, Denali at age 14, Everest at age 16 becoming the youngest Indian and one of the youngest women in the world to summit from the Nepal side, Vinson Massif in Antarctica at age 17 completing the Seven Summits, and skied to the South Pole at age 17. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about her on Mann Ki Baat when she was 12 years old. She has won the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar. She has been supported by the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation and the Reliance Foundation. Only the North Pole expedition remains before she completes the full Explorers Grand Slam.

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