BENGALURU: While most teenagers spend their days preparing for board examinations, 16-year-old Nisha Sasikumar was navigating the Khumbu Icefall, battling sub-zero temperatures and thin air on her way to the summit of Mount Everest. On May 25, she became the youngest female to scale the world’s highest peak via the South Col route in Nepal, a feat she describes as far more mentally demanding than physically exhausting. Nisha was felicitated at the 15th Strategic Electronics Summit (SES) 2026 in Bengaluru on Friday.
Her 45-day Everest expedition took an unexpected turn when her father, who had accompanied her on the climb, developed Acute Mountain Sickness during the acclimatisation phase and was forced to descend. Left to decide whether to abandon the expedition or continue, Nisha chose to push ahead with only her Sherpa guides.
“The hardest part wasn’t the mountain; it was climbing without my father,” she recalls. “There was a lot of mental pressure, but the reason I was climbing was bigger than the mountain itself.”
The summit push tested her resolve further. Delayed by changing weather, she spent three nights above 8,000 metres in the ‘death zone,’ where oxygen levels are critically low.
Along the route, she encountered the stark realities of high-altitude mountaineering, seeing several bodies of climbers who had perished and later learning that two people she had met at Everest Base Camp had also died during the expedition.
There were moments when she considered giving up. Food poisoning during the climb, relentless ascents and overwhelming loneliness nearly ended her attempt. A brief message from her friend over the walkie-talkie “Eat, drink, go to Camp 3 and rest” gave her the motivation to continue.
Reaching the summit, however, was not the finish line she had imagined. “I looked up, realised I had finally made it and tears just started rolling down my face,” she says. With unusually clear weather and very few climbers at the top that day, she spent nearly 20 minutes taking in the Himalayan panorama before beginning the equally demanding descent.
Nisha’s mountaineering journey began at the age of 14 after she discovered the Seven Summits challenge online. Her first expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro ended without a summit due to a medical emergency and a snowstorm, but the setback only strengthened her resolve. She went on to summit Mount Elbrus, Carstensz Pyramid and Aconcagua before achieving her biggest milestone yet- the Mount Everest.
Balancing expeditions with her studies, Nisha plans to complete the Seven Summits challenge. For her, Everest is not the destination but another milestone in a much longer climb.