Krushnaa Patil, the first woman from Maharashtra and the second youngest girl in the country to climb Mount Everest, is surprisingly down to earth. The Pune-based 19-year-old, who refers to herself as “only two peaks old”, had to first scale the problem of funding her expedition before she could begin her ascent. When the government turned down requests for financial help, Krushnaa’s parents decided to take a bank loan. Their continual support has definitely paid off, as their daughter has now reached dizzying heights in media. The environmentally conscious young woman now intends to use her fame to facilitate cleaning up the Indian glaciers, beginning with the Gangotri. On her expedition, her team collected approximately five tonnes of garbage in the Himalayas with the help of their sherpas, whom they would pay to bring back waste as a part of the resourceful Cash for Trash scheme. In her blog, the burning face, Krushnaa describes the smaller obstacles she surmounted along her journey, such as crossing her first ladder and witnessing a nearby avalanche. Her online diary entries are sprinkled with quirky tales of a hair-braiding experiment gone terribly wrong and about what happens when you don’t apply enough sunscreen.

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