‘I became a mountaineer by fluke’

Had she not been a mountaineer, Padmashri award winner Santosh Yadav (48) would have been an environmentalist. She was the first woman to climb the 29,035 feet high Mount Everest twice, in 1992 and 1993, and the first woman to climb it from its Kangshung face. Ms Yadav, a former Indo-Tibetan Border Police officer, is passionate about nature.