Bachendri Pal  Bachendri Pal (born 24 May 1954) is an Indian mountaineer, who in 1984 became the first Indian woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.She was awarded the third highest civilian award Padma Bhushan by Government of India in 2019. Bachendri Pal was on born to a Bhotiya family on 24 May 1954 in Nakuri village, in the Uttarkashi district in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. She was one of five children to Hansa Devi, and Shri Kishan Singh Pal, – a border tradesman who supplied groceries from India to Tibet. She was born only five days before the first anniversary of the original ascension of Mount Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary. She completed her M.A. and B.Ed. from D.A.V. Post Graduate College, Dehradun. She got her first taste of mountaineering thrill at the age of 12, along with her friends, scaled a high peak during a school picnic. On the invitation of her school principal, she was sent to college for higher studies and became the first girl to 1982, during her course at Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, she climbed Mt. Gangotri 1 and Mt. Rudragaria . In that time, she got employment as an instructor at the National Adventure Foundation (NAF), which had set up an adventure school for training women to learn mountaineering. Pal encountered stiff opposition from her family and relatives when she decided to opt for a career as a professional mountaineer rather than as a schoolteacher. She soon found success in her chosen field, however. After summitting a number of smaller peaks, she was selected to join India's first mixed-gender team to attempt an expedition to Mount Everest in 1984. In 1984, India had scheduled its fourth expedition, christened "Everest'84", to Mount Everest. Bachendri Pal was selected as one of the members of the elite group of six Indian women and eleven men who were privileged to attempt ascent to the Mount Everest ("Sagarmatha" in Nepalese). The news filled them with a sense of ecstasy and excitement. The team was flown to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, in March 1984, and from there the team moved onwards. Recalling her first glimpse of the Mount Everest, Bachendri once reminisced: "We the hill people have always worshipped the mountains…my overpowering emotion at this awe-inspiring spectacle was, therefore, devotional."