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Following on from the recent success of the Pakistani
women’s cricket team winning gold in the Asia Games [i] Mirza Ali (27)
hopes to reach new heights partnering with his younger sister Samina
Baig (20) to embark on the First Pakistani Women’s Winter Climbing
Expedition. It is easy to be enthused by Mirza an experienced climber of
several years as he counts down the days to the start of their adventure
in the Karakorum planning the route and buying food supplies for the
trip. He delights in the fact that a friend has donated a pair of men’s
boots for Samina to use on her climb as unfortunately funding does not
come easy and Mirza spends a lot of his time knocking on doors for
sponsorship money.
Mirza graduated from Karachi University with a qualification in Tourism
and Management. Born in the village of Shimshal, Hunza region, he is the
youngest mountaineer in Pakistan to make a climb of 6050m, Mingligh Sar
was the first summit he conquered. Mirza is passionate about climbing
and aims to be the first Pakistani to climb all 14 of the 8000 metre
peaks in the world with the intention of becoming an adventure
ambassador for Pakistan. He cites as his idol Nazir Sabir who was the
first Pakistani to reach the summit of Mount Everest and hopes to use
his love of adventure travel to promote peace and understanding with
both national and international communities.
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Mirza has great achievements already under his belt. He developed and
set up a joint venture project with Pakistan Youth Outreachiii and the
Satwa Gunar Project [iii] The idea was to climb with a film maker and
photographer as part of a team of locals and to make a documentary
focusing on a high school grade 10 student (his sister Samina) who
became the first Pakistani woman mountaineer to summit an unclimbed
6400m peak. This was the young woman’s first expedition and ascent and
an amazing achievement for all concerned. The mountain she climbed,
Chashksin Sar has now been renamed Samina Peak in her honour. Describing
her experience for Explorersweb Samina said, “Shimshali mountaineering
is sort of inherited. Our ancestors built Shimshal beneath a glacier,
and our community survived this harsh environment using mountaineering
skills. Our grandparents and great-grandparents climbed with homemade
ropes, wooden stakes and animal horns. Modern mountaineering only
reached Shimshal in the 1980s, but Shimshali men soon made their mark.
Four of the seven Pakistanis who have summited K2 are from my village”
[iv]
Brother and sister are muslim Ishmailis, a sect that broke away from the
Shiites in the 8th century and their religious practice is seen to be
less regimented than other muslim communities. Mirzir told me that men
and women are deemed to have equal status in Ishmaili societies and the
women are used to working at high altitude gathering dry juniper and
grazing yaks. They both hope that their activities will help encourage
more young people of both sexes in Pakistan to become involved in
adventure travel and lead by example.
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Rubab Raza became a role model for women in 2004 by becoming the first
female to represent Pakistan in an Olympic swimming event aged only
13[v] Khadija Ranja argues however that it has not always been easy for
female athletes to gain acceptance in Pakistan and states, “we have been
born with a mindset and a family setting that dictates to us that a
woman’s place is in her home, taking care of her husband and children,
and not in a field, wielding a hockey stick or bat. The fact that women
break out of such cliché and commonplace roles make them unacceptable in
our society. Women’s sports are looked down in general, in our society,
and that is truly a very sad predicament, because in reality, the
progress of sports in a country is a reflection of its political
stability”[vi]
Mirza’s work is in line with the United Nations Millenium Development
Goals for women and youth which include gender equality and promoting
education.[vii] Pakistan is a signatory supporting this agenda. He is
very proud of his sister’s achievements and said “it is my intention to
motivate more women to participate as this will give a message of
confidence to females everywhere that if a young woman can climb a
mountain, she can do anything”. Mirza along with Pakistan Youth Outreach
have devised a long term programme which will incorporate the following,
“to educate youth at grassroots level about mountain adventure, trekking
adventure, and wilderness which will cover environmental education and
the effects of global warming, the focus will be on schools, college and
university.”
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Mirza has a growing number of supporters across the globe, loves meeting
people from different cultures and encourages people to visit Pakistan
to admire and experience the beauty of the landscape. On Sunday he wrote
“the company of good people is like the shop of perfume, whether you
have bought perfume or not, you will receive a lot of good perfume, my
friends are like the shop of perfume.”
Samina has already set out to acclimatize. The expedition starts
officially on the 1st December to the end of the month. The enthusiastic
adventurer is motivated by her faith in Allah and inspired by the purity
of her environment, her ultimate goal is to one day scale K2. Joining
Samina on this expedition will be Jennifer Rawlins from the United
States and led by Mirza they plan to climb a 5850m peak named Qusar and
an unnamed peak. (Anyone wishing to support the expedition with a
donation can log on to Pakistan Youth Outreach. |
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