The first woman amputee to summit Everest shares her incredible story of determination
- After losing her leg in a horrific robbery in her native India, Arunima Sinha refused to give in to despair
- She decided to climb Mount Everest and is now ready to tackle the last peak of the Seven Summits Challenge
Arunima Sinha whooped for joy. After a gruelling climb over 52 days, several near brushes with death, and as severe a test of her will as she had ever faced, she was on top of the world. She had conquered Everest – the first woman amputee to accomplish this feat.
Since that day in May 2013, Sinha has scaled the highest peaks on five other continents and is just one summit away – McKinley in North America – from completing the Seven Summits Challenge to reach the highest point on each of the seven continents.
A former national level volleyball player in India, Sinha was travelling from Lucknow to New Delhi in 2011 by train when robbers tried to snatch her gold necklace. “I resisted and so they pushed me out of the train,” says Sinha, who watched in horror as another train sped towards her and ran over her left leg. “I lay by the train tracks bleeding and screaming in pain the entire night, fighting off rats.”
Villagers found her in the morning and carried her to the local hospital, which lacked basic facilities. Doctors amputated her left leg below the knee and inserted a rod in her right leg to support it – without anaesthetic.
Sinha was moved to a New Delhi hospital where she was fitted with a prosthetic leg and spent four months recovering. Those were her “darkest hours,” when she came to hate the look of pity in people’s eyes. She took inspiration from Yuvraj Singh, an Indian cricketer who had successfully battled lung cancer and was forging his return to the elite levels of the sport.