“I want to change perception of Pakistan and promote what it has to offer.”
WHILE some of us were afraid to cross the road to go to the supermarket for fear of catching Covid, Naila Kiani became the first Pakistani woman to summit an 8,000m peak in Pakistan – Gasherbrum II (8,035m) – in July this year.
Plus, she did it six months after having her second baby. Plus, the highest peak she had climbed prior to this was 5,600m, the K2 base camp trek. Plus, she’s already thinking of attempting her second 8,000m peak in Pakistan which has a total of five peaks of that elevation.
Speaking over Zoom from her home in Dubai, she said, “Pakistan is known as the land of mountains. I want to climb Pakistan first, I want to promote what Pakistan has to offer. There is so much beauty but the perception is so negative. Having lived in the UK and Dubai, I am aware the image is linked to terrorism but it’s got so much tourism potential with its mountains and nature.”
I suspect Kiani has another purpose – to prove that women can do anything especially when she’s grown up in a male-dominated society like Pakistan and in a protective environment where, as a young girl, she wasn’t allowed to wander far from her home. “We had this small forest near where we lived and I was forbidden to go there on my own,” she recalled.
In school, she remembers studying hard and sleeping a lot because even though she wanted to take part in sports, “they didn’t have what I wanted to do”, which was martial arts, horse riding and boxing. “They had running, volleyball and even outside school, I couldn’t find the sports I wanted to do.”
That lack of distraction perhaps paid off. She did well in school and when she was 17, she moved to the UK to study aerospace engineering at the University of London. She made a pact with her parents – “they didn’t have money to pay for my tuition and they said, you have to work to pay your own way”.
“That was when real life hit me. I had lived in a protected environment in Pakistan, my parents gave me everything. But I made the choice to go to the UK to study.”
“If you put your heart in it, you can do it”
As tough as it was – working fulltime jobs while studying, she got her degree in aerospace engineering which, before the summit climb, she considered her biggest achievement. That experience taught her that “no matter how hard something is, if you put your heart in it, you can do it”.
It also gave her the opportunity to finally indulge her passion for sports and adventure. She flew two-seater planes, took up diving and horse riding, but she found her punch, so to speak, in boxing and became an amateur boxer, taking part in a few fights. Hiking and mountaineering were her two other passions. “I was inspired by other mountaineers, how most of them came from tough backgrounds and overcame adversity.”
She recalled the first time she fell in love with mountaineering. It was the trek to K2 base camp three years ago. “It was very tough but I loved it.”
After that trek, she and her husband planned for a baby and she got pregnant. “I didn’t think of mountain climbing then. Climbing takes four to six weeks minimum, and I didn’t want to leave my husband and kid behind.”
But the fire within had been lit and she had planned a summit climb in early 2020 when Covid hit and she was forced to cancel that expedition. In some ways, she was relieved. “I was not mentally prepared, I was not prepared to leave my first kid, such a small human being, behind.”
Right away, she and her husband planned another baby, she got pregnant and the second child was born in November 2020.
This time, the urge to climb was relentless. “I just wanted to climb the mountain and I thought, how do I resolve this roadblock? How do I leave two kids behind?” Plus, she works fulltime as a banking executive in Dubai, where she’s lived for the past seven years.
With precision and planning, she put in place a system and a network so that “I could have peace of mind that my kids would be safe”. She also did a lot of research into how much sports a new mother could do. “It wasn’t easy trying to find that information online. I went to physios and doctors and they gave me confidence, and I slowly trained myself to make sure I don’t harm my body in the longterm.”
She sought out sponsorship to defray her costs and found a willing partner in RS Components, which provided her with the equipment and paraphernalia she needed for the climb. “I contacted them a few days before I was due to leave for Pakistan. They took the risk and approved the sponsorship.”
After four months in training, Kiani left Dubai in June 2021 for Pakistan, amid the pandemic. “I was vaccinated, cases weren’t that high in UAE and in north Pakistan, there were no cases.”
Her only worry was whether there’d be a flight back from Pakistan to Dubai, but that, she felt, was not an immediate concern. “The thing with big adventures is, you have to do it when you are physically and mentally prepared, and you can’t keep thinking of obstacles ahead, you just deal with the step right in front of you.”
All in, the climb to the top took five weeks. “It was physically very hard. The high altitude was challenging. I was exhausted. But the hardest thing was the cold – I am from Dubai – I am not used to the cold. Getting up and walking over to eat and pee was a nightmare.”
When she made it to the summit on July 18, her first thought was “nothing because I was exhausted to the limit but also unbelievable”.
“I had told myself I’d go as far as I can. When I reached the 7,300m base camp, I felt really stressed out. My legs felt heavy but mentally I was strong. Never for one moment did I think of giving up. You can’t let negative thinking drag you down.”
This experience has given her confidence that “whatever comes my way, I can keep resolving it. Face the problem when it comes.”
Kiani also did not realise what a sensation she would cause in her home country. She hadn’t realised she’d be the first Pakistani woman to climb one of its 8,000m peaks. “I never imagined that in my wildest dreams. Now when I think of it, I realised I did something that was not usual,” she said, with a laugh.
“Pakistan has changed a lot since I lived there but there are still some issues around women empowerment. It was worse when I grew up – there were so many things you couldn’t do.”
Today, the world looks very different. Boxers can dream of becoming presidents – take Manny Pacquiao who has joined the Philippine presidential race – and cricketers can become prime ministers, as Imran Khan has proven in Pakistan.
“I believe anything is possible,” Kiani said.
Asked if she planned to have another baby before her second climb, she laughed. “I think not.”
• All images credit: Naila Kiani, Sohail Sakhi, Taimoor Awais
