Ajeet Bajaj and daughter, Deeya, have become the first Indian father-daughter duo to climb Mt Everest. MUSBA HASHMI catches up with them to bring you a becoming account
They say that from the instant he lays eyes on her, a father adores his daughter. Whoever she grows up to be, she is always to him that little girl in pigtails. She makes him feel like Christmas. In exchange, he makes a secret promise not to see the awkwardness of her teenage years, the mistakes she makes, or the secrets she keeps
— Anonymous
They are the partners in crime and great adventure enthusiasts. They have conquered many peaks and made new records. Meet Gurgaon-based 53-year-old mountaineer, Ajeet Bajaj and his 24-year-old daughter Deeya Bajaj, who have achieved a new milestone by becoming the first father-daughter in India to scale Mount Everest on May 16, 2018.
“Man can’t conquer Nature. We are mere specks, almost insignificant. Adventure was a hobby for me. Deeya and I are adventure enthusiasts and love doing things together. It was a wonderful journey. We are blessed, lucky and just following our dreams,” Ajeet Bajaj, the director of Snow leopard Adventures, tells you.
Speaking about what Snow leopard Adventure is all about Deeya tells you that it is an adventure travel company that owns and operates camp sites all over India including Rishikesh, Orccha and the Kundalika in Maharashtra. The company started in 1990 and I like to call it my parent’s first baby. We are into rafting, hiking, trekking, introducing people to the outdoors, in a more comfortable fashion. Even though people sleep in tents, the tents have proper beds and attached bathrooms. Despite living out there in the wild, the client is always in the lap of luxury.”
The adventure bug bit Ajeet Bajaj young — he was just 13 when he climbed his first peak — Friendship Peak near Kullu in Himachal Pradesh. It was his father who introduced Bajaj to trekking when he was only eight years old. Then, his teachers played an important role in motivating him towards the outdoors. He then started skiing, rafting and kayaking.
“Sir Edmund Hillary, a mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist from New Zealand, was the one person who inspired me a lot. I met him while I was in college and had the proud privilege to go rafting with him down the Ganga,” Bajaj tells you who has a lot of feathers in his cap.
He is the first Indian to ski to the North and South Pole within a year. He was the first Asian to have rafted some of the wildest rivers on the planet spanning six continents like the river Ravi and Sutlej. He had also run 50 courses in expedition for the Indian Armed Forces in river rafting and kayaking. He was the first Indian to do whitewater kayaking and if this was not enough to add to his adventure kitty, he has also climbed five of the seven Summits — Mt Everest, Aconcagua in South America, Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa, Elbrus in Russia, Oceania in Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia. The two Summits left to scale are Denali in North America and Vincent Massif in Antarctica which the father-daughter plans to scale next year.
The father of two daughters — Deeya and Meghna — Bajaj has been into adventure sports since his childhood.
While this spirit may have skipped younger daughter, she is pursuing Hotel Management from Switzerland, Deeya is following her father’s footsteps. Bajaj tells you that just being an adventurer is not enough.
“I am a proud father, who believes in nurturing girls and letting them do anything and everything they want,” Bajaj says and recalls the difficulties that they faced during the journey.
“Walking from Camp One to Camp Two, there is a very steep snow covered slope which we were climbing and then we were near the end of climbing that slope, there was a very big snow storm, we couldn’t even climb at that time, we had to stop. Winds were gusting with 50-60 km an hour, when we returned to our tent, we were so worried, we thought that the tent was going to tear to shreds and we are going to get blown off the mountain,” Bajaj says and tells you that their day would start at 6:30 am.
“We started out on the Summit at night at 9 pm from Camp Three — the main and final camp — which is about 8,300 metres. The climb is at night because the weather conditions turn bad by the afternoon and also there is less danger of an avalanche. We were going very well, we crossed most of the difficult points but then my oxygen mask started giving trouble about an hour-and-a-half away from the Summit. My mask was completely frozen and I couldn’t breathe. I told Deeya to continue. luckily, I was able to get a replacement mask and follow her quickly,” Bajaj recounts, and feels obliged to the Goddess of Mountain for allowing them to be there.
“So many things can go wrong and we did but we were just lucky in the end to be humbly able to get there. The mountain always has a few avalanches; but in our case, there were no problems caused due to an avalanche. If you ever get caught in one, the chances of survival are very little,” he says.
It was because Bajaj was held up and trying to fix his oxygen mask and made Deeya reach the peak 10 minutes earlier than him. Describing the moment when she was standing at the top, she says: “I was a little ahead of dad and it was still dark when I reached the peak. Then the magic unfolded right in front of my eyes when it was time for sunrise. I was stunned and amazed. It was beautiful,” Deeya recounts, who according to her father has elements of naughtiness just like other child but is more disciplined when it comes to her goals and dreams.
Bajaj tells you that he has a healthy and happy relationship with Deeya. “She is my best outdoor buddy. We enjoy being with each other. We complement each other. We are also on the same wave-length as far as safety and sustainability are concerned. We love the mountains, we enjoy the mountains. We are blessed and lucky that we are following our dreams. We are each other’s strength and have supported each other throughout the expedition,” Bajaj says and tells you that the Sherpas are facing a lot of problems.
“They are the native people of the mountain. They are paid to prepare the routes for the climbers and carry the climbing kit. Being a Sherpa is a very risky job. They are the real rock-stars of the mountains. They are definitely the real heroes, without them the climbers can’t do what they do — scale the peak. They make the journey easy for us,” Bajaj says whose next goal is to finish the Explorers Grand Slam, by completing the remaining two out of the seven Summits and skiing to the North and South pole.
Deeya too wants to follow her father’s footsteps. “Dad has only two Summits left before he finishes the Explorers Grand Slam but it is my big goal as well. I also want to do something for woman empowerment. I started a girl’s wing — Ganga Vatika Girls Home in an already existing NGO — back in 2011,” Deeya tells you who besides scaling Mt Everest has also climbed Elbrus in Russia and Kosciuszko in Australia.
Talking more about her work, Deeya says that the children at the NGO had been left there by their parents who had leprosy and because they couldn’t take care of them, the NGO took them in. “It is unfortunate that the society treats these kids as outcasts; they are not the ones with leprosy. Also, the disease is now treatable so shunning them is incorrect. I visited this NGO when I was 17 and was surprised that there were no girls. That’s when I was told that there is no place for them to stay and they didn’t want to take the responsibility for the girls. With my parent’s help, we convinced them to open a girl’s wing as well. I arranged the funds for it, and we were able to arrange Rs 10 lakh and 12 little girls were taken in. Since then the wing has grown and today, there are about 30 girls. They are a constant inspiration for me — when I meet them, I realise how privileged we are — to have access to things and not to be shunned by the society. In life, if I could do something, I would somehow return the opportunities that I have had to these girls and impact many more lives that would be my biggest dream,” Deeya states and gives out a strong message for the girls in India.
“There are not many girls into adventure sport. Every girl should explore the world. Girls can do everything, they just need to go out and explore whatever they want. They have to explore their field of interest, their passion and just go with it,” Deeya advises and feels lucky to have parents like her father and mother who supported her in her decision of going to expeditions.
“I am glad that I have such supportive, understanding, motivating, encouraging and loving parents,” Deeya says who works in a corporate set-up and loves to write which she gets from her mother who is a journalist.
“For me, adventure sports have been a way of life since I was very young. For us, the family holidays weren’t like where you just go and lie down and relax on a beach but it would be like waking up in the morning and going on a hike. I was introduced to adventures from a very young age,” Deeya says.
Her advance mountaineering course led her to scale DKD II and she tells you that the best thing about mountaineering and expeditions is that they bring you closer to the world. “It was fantastic and made me realise that this is something that I want to keep doing. I loved it and had a great time. It left me wanting for more. Such courses are important before you climb a major peak because they give you an idea about whether you will enjoy the conditions or you won’t. My biggest learning from these expeditions is to be humble and to never be too overconfident about climbing any mountain. You have to go about it with a lot of respect because the minute you let your ego into it and use the word ‘conquer’, it implies you are overpowering nature. You go to these mountains and then you will realise that the Mother Nature is so big, majestic and wonderful that you can’t conquer anything in Nature,” Deeya says who, with her father, trained and researched before climbing Mt Everest. The duo also saw many videos related to trekking and read a lot of books on it. The one book which inspired Deeya is Parts of Glory by Jeffrey Archer.
“We did a lot of training when we were in Delhi, we used to go running and spend two hours in the gym daily. The best things about expeditions are that you can eat whatever you want to because you are losing so much weight,” Deeya tells you.
Also before this expedition, they went for others expeditions to train for this one, one to ladakh where they climbed a mountain called Kang Yatse II. They went to Nepal and bought their equipment and went for a high altitude trek to lake Gokyo. They also went to France and did a lot of technical climbing. They went back to ladakh for high altitude trek and that was when they saw the elusive snow leopard which Deeya says was ‘an amazing experience’.
Bajaj tells you that following their passion is what makes them happy and tells you that the Indian Government is doing a great job with running institutes to train people for mountaineering.
“As far as we are concerned, I think we are done with the expedition and definitely the encouragement we get is fantastic but for other climbers, I think we have to move our focus away. India has 73 per cent of the Himalayas. We have to get Indian climbers to scale peaks. This and promoting adventure sports amongst the youth in our country should be the main focus of the Government,’ Bajaj opines.
He has an advise for the people who want to make their career in mountaineering. “Anybody who wants to make a career out of mountaineering has to be extremely fit, gain a lot of experience and aim to be the most amazing mountaineer. There are two things that the mountaineer has to pick up — associated skills like first aid and CPR and excellent communication skills. Anybody, who is physically fit, enjoys outdoors and the mountains, can go for this career,” Bajaj says.
Deeya tells you that the cost of the expedition is Rs 35 lakh-Rs 50 lakh with a travel agency. “The highly specialised equipments such as the boots and the Down Suit are not available in India and can be bought only from Nepal and other countries,” she says who feels truly blessed to have got so many accolades for their feat and tells you that Mother Goddess has showered her blessings on them for making all this possible.
“We have just come back and there are people — loved ones who stayed back, my wife, my parents— my mother is in her 80s, my father is 94, our entire family, my other daughter Meghna, they all have been very supportive and they went through a lot of stress while we were away for a month-and-a-half, so this would not be a good time to talk about our future plans because we’ll get a good thrashing from them (laughs). Of course this is our hobby, it’s our passion and as we will go long, there will be plans, we will do more climbing and go on other adventure trips in the future but for now, we are not planning on anything, we are just spending time resting and recovering at home.
Deeya agrees and adds that at present, even if they think about another expedition her mother is bound to get angry.
