India's youngest woman to scale Mt. Everest has a message for women

Sixteen-year-old Shivangi Pathak, who has become the youngest Indian woman to climb Mount Everest, has a message for women.

She says that women can achieve anything they want if they have the desire.

The teen climber from Haryana's Hisar district reached the top of the mountain on Thursday last week, completing her over one-month trekking, which she began from the Nepal side on April 6.

After completing her successful expedition, Pathak is now back in Nepal's capital Kathmandu with the message for women.

"They (women) can achieve anything if they desire. If I can make it, if Arunima Sinha (first Indian amputee to climb Mt Everest) can summit the Mount Everest then they can do anything," she told ANI.

Talking about her motivation to climb the 8,848-metre peak, Pathak credits Arunima Sinha.

"When I was 15 years old, I had gone to a seminar with my mother and I watched a biopic on Arunima Sinha there. At that time, I was carefree and after watching the biopic I felt like, if she is able to make it then I also can do it," Pathak said, who will turn 17 in two months.

To realise this, Pathak joined Delhi's Jawahar Institute of Mountain and completed her courses in mountaineering. For preparations, she also participated in different high-altitude training programmes in Kashmir's glacier.

Now after climbing the world's highest peak, Pathak now wants to focus on her studies and do the mountaineering alongside.

"I just have passed my intermediate exams with 70 per cent marks. The education is most important for now and there will be nothing, without education there will be no use of the counted expeditions which I make. So, I will continue my studies along with mountaineering," said Pathak, the young mountaineer.