She became the first woman from the Northeast to summit the world’s highest peak in May 2011. Now, she is giving back to society by promoting adventure sports and providing a livelihood option for village women, reports Prasanta Mazumdar
Tine Mena was at a loss thinking about how she would fund her costly Mount Everest expedition, but fellow villagers in her native Lower Dibang Valley district of Arunachal Pradesh had come forward to help her in whatever little way they could.
The odds were against her, but Mena summited the world’s highest mountain peak in May 2011 to become the first woman from the Northeast to achieve this rare feat.
Call it the cycle of life that she is now giving back to society by promoting adventure sports and providing a livelihood option for village women.
For the past decade, the 39-year-old adventure instructor in Arunachal Pradesh’s Department of Youth Affairs has been working to promote mountain biking, trekking, and rafting in Lower Dibang Valley and adjoining Anjaw districts. She often sets out for remote villages to organise mountain biking events for scouting talents, shelling out her own money.
She brings select candidates to Roing, the headquarters of the Lower Dibang Valley district, for a five-day training session, during which the Department of Youth Affairs further evaluates their performance. They then get trained to participate in national events. Rubi Lombo, one of her proteges, is currently a coach of the National MTB Cycling team under the Sports Authority of India.
Mena says she and her team members look for sponsors to fund the bikers’ travel and stay when they travel to different parts of the country to participate in national events. Help seldom comes from sponsors, she adds.
“There are many trekking trails in our region. We organise treks for tourists and make some profit. We use a portion of it to take care of the mountain bikers,” she explains.
Parts of eastern Arunachal had a serious problem of opium cultivation and addiction. Then, the government went hard at the opium growers, achieving success to a great extent. Mena intervened to make a difference in her own way.
She thought of engaging poor women in making and selling bags. She had the expertise. She bought the raw materials and started designing and making the bags. She selected over 20 village women. She, along with eight others, designed and made the bags and the others sold them. The sellers include several former opium peddlers.
She says she derives great satisfaction from engaging in such activities and helping people who are in dire need as she herself grew up in abject poverty. As a teenager, she worked as a daily wager to help her father, who worked as a farmer.
“My childhood was spent in the lap of picturesque Mishmi hills. For reasons I do not know, I had the strength of a boy when I was young. Once, I disguised myself as a boy by wearing boys’ attire and carried loads uphill as a porter during an Indian Army expedition. However, I was caught soon after. Army officials told me this job was not for females,” Mena, who was born in Echali village, located 178 km from Roing, says.
Reminiscing about her mountaineering life, the mother of four says she was part of the Indian leadership team that summited many previously unclimbed peaks.
“I nurtured the dream of scaling Mount Everest since 2007. That very year, I met a mountaineer named Romeo Meitei from Manipur during an expedition on the China border in Arunachal. He told me I had the qualities and I should try to scale Mount Everest,” she says.
Taking his advice, she went to Manipur to do a one-month course. She had a difficult time communicating with locals as she spoke only Hindi, and they spoke either English or the Manipuri language.
“I won a gold medal. During my stay, I saw Everest for the first time, albeit in a documentary. After leaving Manipur, I joined the Himalayan Institute of Mountaineering (HMI), Darjeeling, as Meitei suggested. I got the best student gold medal,” Mena says.
Noting her talent, the state government sponsored her mountaineering course at HMI. She climbed several peaks, including in Jammu and Kashmir, and felt she was ready for an expedition to Everest.
“I was selected for an Everest expedition, but finance was my biggest challenge. I needed Rs 20-25 lakh. My villagers came to my rescue. Some offered Rs 50, while others offered Rs 100. The Jindal group was working on a project in our area at the time. The local MLA approached its senior officials. A year later, it sponsored me. I climbed Everest in 2011,” Mena says.
She summited altogether 17 peaks before leaving mountaineering in 2017 following her marriage so that she could devote more time to her family.
Article Credit: newindianexpress