There is a big rock at Everest Base Camp. Anyone who reaches that far knows the one — it has “EVEREST BASE CAMP” and the height painted on it, and almost everyone stops there for a photo before turning back.
In April 2022, I stood on that rock and did padmasana. Then chakrasana. My family held up the Indian flag next to me. And a few feet away, my papa’s eyes quietly filled up — because that day was also his own father’s death anniversary, and somehow all of it had come together in one place, at 17,598 feet.
I was nine years old. This was my first real mountain. And like most mountain stories, mine didn’t actually begin on the mountain.
It started with my papa’s old videos
Long before I was born, my papa — Maulik Panchal — was already a mountaineer. Everest Base Camp. Mount Kilimanjaro. Mount Elbrus. An attempt on Aconcagua where he reached 6,800 metres before the weather stopped him just short of the summit.
I grew up watching his old photos and videos. And I remember it was very simple for me. I would tell him:
That one line is where everything started — a small girl watching her father’s old climbs on a screen, deciding she wanted the mountains too. But papa didn’t say yes right away. He did something first that I understood only later.
First, 35 kilograms had to go
Before he planned my trek, papa made a decision about himself. He lost 35 kilograms. It wasn’t only about fitness — he says it was about belief, that losing that weight is what gave him the confidence he could do this trek again, this time not alone, but leading me up the same trail he had once walked by himself.
Only after that did the real preparation begin — and we did it as a family. For three to four months, the three of us — papa, my mummy Mona, and me — walked every single night. One to one and a half hours, every day, in the dark. I did yoga as well, and some days the whole family went for long cycling rides together.
No shortcuts. No fancy altitude machines. Just my family walking in the dark every night, getting a nine-year-old ready for the Himalayas. Not everyone around us was sure about it, honestly — a nine-year-old, on Everest’s trail? But that part of the story has a happy ending. (I’ll come to it.)
The trek: every season in twelve days
We flew out of Ahmedabad on 31 March 2022. By 1 April we were in Nepal, and on 2 April our trek began from Lukla — the tiny, scary airstrip town that is the gateway to Everest.
What I remember most is that this one trek had every season in it. The first few days were warm — so warm that I trekked in just a dry-fit t-shirt, no jacket. Then, as we climbed higher, the cold came, until one morning the water I needed to brush my teeth had frozen solid overnight. On the way back down, after Base Camp, it snowed. And on the very last day, walking down from Phakding to Lukla, it rained hard. Heat, frost, snow, rain — all of it packed into less than two weeks.
A few smaller things I still remember:
- The suspension bridges were my favourite part. Those long, swaying bridges over the gorges that make most grown-ups grab the cables — I loved them. That little bit of thrill was the best part of the day.
- The food got harder to eat the higher we went. As the height increased, my appetite just disappeared. It wasn’t that the food was bad — the mountain does that to you.
- The three of us slept across two beds. At night in the teahouses we squeezed together, and the body heat helped. The cold was there, but with my family close, it stayed manageable.
The only real scare came two days before Base Camp, at a place called Thukla. I got a mild fever. Up that high, that deep into the trek, a fever is the kind of thing that can end everything. It didn’t end mine. I never once said “ab nahi ho payega” — I never said I couldn’t do it. I rested, I kept going, and on 10 April 2022, I was standing at Everest Base Camp.
The day that belonged to three generations
Here is the part that turned this trek into something much bigger for us. The day we reached Base Camp was the death anniversary of my papa’s father — my grandfather. So we did the only thing that felt right: we dedicated the climb to him, right there.
I watched my papa that day. The first time he had done EBC, he was alone. This time his whole family was standing next to him — his wife, his nine-year-old daughter, and the memory of his own father, all in one frozen, sunlit moment. His eyes filled up. I saw it.
I was nine, so I didn’t say anything big. I climbed up onto that famous Base Camp rock and did my yoga — a standing chakrasana, then a calm padmasana — and posed with the national flag while my family took the photo. No speech. No big announcement. Just a small girl doing handstands at 17,598 feet, completely at home.
What that mountain started
By 14 April, the trek was over and we were on our way home. But really, it wasn’t over — it was just the beginning. Everest Base Camp at nine was my first chapter. After this would come the Chadar Trek — across a frozen river, in minus 35 degrees, when I was eleven. Then Kang Yatse, almost 20,000 feet. And alongside the mountains, the powerlifting — the squats and deadlifts that people would later use to call me “Gujarat’s Strongest Girl.”
And those people who weren’t so sure at the start? Once the records started coming, they became my biggest fans — the first ones to tell others what I had done.
I’ve learned that this is usually how it goes with mountains. I was nine when I learned it, on a rock at the bottom of the tallest mountain on earth.