August 28, 2014
“Great things are done when men and mountains meet,” said William Blake, the 19th century English poet. But he had not met the brother and sister mountaineering team, Mirza and Samina Ali Baig for whom great things have been achieved when men, women and mountains meet.
The siblings spoke about their encounters with mighty mountains as part of AKU’s Special Lecture Series. This August, the duo marked two major milestones: climbing Mt Everest and the highest peak on each of the world’s seven continents.
With this feat, Samina has become the first Pakistani woman and only the third Pakistani to successfully climb Everest.
So it was an evening of story telling, an intimate glimpse into their mountaineering adventures that held the audience spellbound.
Hailing from Shimshal, a remote village in Gilgit-Baltistan in the north of Pakistan, Mirza recounted how he took up mountain climbing at just 16. “I didn’t even have enough money to buy a pair of shoes when I started climbing mountains,” he said. He started work as a porter carrying loads for foreign mountaineers before progressing to camp cook but all the while dreaming of achieving more.
“You can do anything you want,” Mirza said. “All you need to do is put in some extra work.”
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Ismailimail 