The first Arab woman Nelly Attar, who scaled the world’s second highest mountain K2, has urged Pakistani and Arab women to pursue their dreams, saying "if you have a dream then go and make it a reality".
“They [women] can do it, regardless of the challenges that they’re faced with, regardless of the limitations, they can do it. Nothing, and no one should stop you. If you have a vision, if you have a dream, go and achieve that dream. Don’t use your circumstances as an excuse, use them as your reason to go forward,” Arab News quoted her as saying.
Attar, who summited K2 last week, left her career as a mental health professional in 2017 to focus on sports and mountain expeditions. In 2020, the Muslim Women Network named her “One of the Top Influential Women in Sports,” while Sports 360 in 2019 called her the “Female Fitness Influencer of the Year Across the GCC.”
Attar successfully climbed Mount Everest in 2019 and scaled 15 other peaks around the world before setting her sights on K2.
Read more: Pakistan celebrates its first woman to summit K2
Sharing her experience on Instagram of summiting the second highest mountain of the world K2, she said, “We started our summit the attempt from camp 4 (7,900m) at 10pm. We planned on moving early to avoid traffic contrary to what we thought, most teams had started already.
“Then we kicked off with the trail of light leading the way. The team broke apart, and we each tried to navigate through the traffic as fast as possible. A tough ascent made it even harder and riskier. Through the shoulder, bottleneck, traverse and blue ice to the summit whilst cutting traffic."
She said more than five hours later, our team amazingly managed to reunite on the summit. “The best part was that we had the summit to ourselves and we finally descended back to the city,” she said.
Also read: Nelly Attar among other foreign climbers begin K2 expedition
She thanked the team for the encouragement and support over the last 5 weeks. “We did it team. K2 you certainly live up to your reputation, what a savage,” she said.
Pakistani climber Samina Baig and Iran’s Afsaneh Hesamifard became the first women from their respective countries to achieve the same feat.
At 8,611 metres (28,251 feet) high, K2 was known as the ‘Savage Mountain’ for its difficult terrain and treacherous weather, making it one of the most difficult mountains to summit in the world.
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