Lhakpa Sherpa: Everest record holder shares her domestic abuse turmoil

Some visitors might find some of the details of home violence in this article disconcerting.

Lhakpa Sherpa is the only woman in history to have climbed Mount Everest ten times, which is the most of any lady, to the outside world.

But behind the images, her personal life has been unsafe and wary.

While conquering the nation’s highest mountain, she says she was enduring local mistreatment from her hubby- including during their 2004 heritage from Tibet.

Then based in America, she has raised three children, supporting them by working in a grocery business and as a cleaner.

Her lifestyle- on and off the hill- has been made into a Netflix film, Mountain Queen: The Conferences of Lhakpa Sherpa, directed by Lucy Walker.

Sherpa is proud of the picture.

Eye blazing, she tells the BBC:” I want to present individuals people can do it”.

What might surprise you about her record-breaking rises is that she does so without much training.

Climbing Everest can be fatal – there have been more than 300 deaths in the region since records of mountain climbing there began a century ago.

So it’s important to be in optimum condition.

In the video, we see Sherpa stay fit by walking in the Connecticut mountains. But she also carries on with her ordinary working life, out of need.

” You’re an extraordinary athlete”, Walker tells Sherpa during our meeting. ” Very high. Quite powerful.

Folks misunderstand it. It’s an incredible success to be able to climb Everest while working your day task.

Sherpa reacts:” I’m no fine with being educated, but I’m very nice with the hills.”

Born in 1973 to animal farmers in the Nepalese Himalayas, she was one of 11 kids.

Crucially, she was raised in an area where education for girls was n’t a priority- she carried her brother to school for hours through the hills, but was n’t allowed inside.

Things are now improving in Nepal – women’s literacy rocketed from 10% in 1981 to 70% by 2021.

But Sherpa’s lack of education left lasting effects- she’s still unable to learn.

Items people take for granted, like using a TV remote control, are hard for her.

Her brother Nima, born in the late 90s, and sons Sunny, 22, and Shiny, 17, help gate the gaps.

By the age of 15, Sherpa was employed as a butler on mountain expeditions frequently as the only girl despite having no formal education.

She was able to prevent a standard arranged marriage thanks to her climbing job.

However, after a brief relation in Kathmandu, she became pregnant.

An young mother, she was also afraid to return home.

However climbing when she could, she met and fell for Romanian-US climber and home-renovation company, George Dijmărescu.

He’d escaped Romania, under dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, by swimming across the Danube valley.

When Dijmărescu and Sherpa got married in 2002, they settled in Connecticut, where Sunny and Shiny were born.

But the child’s relationship fractured when Dijmărescu became aggressive, Sherpa says.

This became clear when they climbed Mountain with a group from New England in 2004.

They had poor wind after climbing to the top.

Dijmărescu’s attitude” took a turn about immediately”, according to blogger Michael Kodas, who reported on the walk for a local report.

Recalling it in the film, he says issues around Dijmărescu got” unfriendly”.

Sherpa, who was in a camp with him, says on cameras:” He look like thunder, seem like shot… George was yelling and he bite me.”

We finally see several pictures taken by Kodas, of her lying incapacitated later.

The journalist claims that he witnessed Dijmărescu yell,” Find this wastes out of here,” as he dragged his wife out of the camp.

In the movie, Sherpa describes being incapacitated as an out-of-body experience.

” Women’s tones turned to lots of birds. I saw my entire life. I fly near my sister’s house. I saw through all … I felt ashamed of myself. I want to get die.”

Finally she remembered her kids, and says:” I’m not ready to die.”

Kodas included the violent event in his 2008 text, High Crimes: The Fate of Tibet in the Age of Greed.

Walker afterward persuaded him to relieve the fresh tapes of his movie to her, calling it a “huge act of trust.”

” It’s such a difficult subject and people do n’t sort of want to get involved, because it’s controversial… but I did n’t take no for an answer,” she tells the BBC.

They remained together for several more times despite their marriage being damaged.

But she claims she was in the clinic when Dijmărescu allegedly assaulted her once more in 2012.

This was a turning point.

With the help of a cultural employee, Sherpa moved with the women to a women’s shelter, where she started to recover her life.

The couple divorced in 2015, and in 2016 a judge awarded Sherpa” only legal custody of the women”.

A report at the time, in OutsideOnline, said Dijmărescu received a six-month suspended sentence and a year of probation, after a conviction for breach of the peace.

He was found not guilty of second-degree assault because court documents stated she did not have a visible head injury.

Dijmărescu died in 2020 of cancers, but the pain he left behind is visible.

Sherpa had a hard time articulating their marriage for the video.

” I wish all the turmoil keep secret, I do n’t want in my life it’s everybody know]ing],” she says.

But her son advised her to make the film with Walker, after researching her previous work.

The producer says to Sherpa:” When you tell your story, you skipped parts, saying,’ We’re never talking about these times’.

” And slowly, gently, we go to the tough things.

It is very traumatizing for you. You get very annoyed, you do n’t sleep. It’s quite powerful.

” But really, if you can share it, persons love you more. Because when you let people know you have tough times, other persons, I think, connect much more now”.

Sunny and Shiny echo this.

They are seen in the movie, and they found it” a little frustrating at first, because of how resilient we were to have our entire life put on display.”

They consented to participate because “our family’s story is such a vital part of the battle we have been through as a household, and how we have used it to enhance not diminish us.”

Not surprisingly, Sherpa says existence was hard after the stress of her wedding.

” Oh my God, yeah, crying. I have a lot in my life. I work rough, I confidence hard”, she says.

” Maybe I say,’ Why am I dead, why am I not lifeless, but some risk. About I’ve been in heaven, and come again. But challenging. But apparently I did it…

” Harm woman is really strong. Does never give up easily. And I keep doing.”

Climbing is not only her passion- it’s even a therapeutic procedure.

” My shadows I leave behind]on the mountain],” she says.

We see her start her record-breaking 10th Mountain rise in 2022.

Whispering goodnight to Shiny, sleeping in a local camp in foundation camp, the walk begins at evening, by flashlight.

This enables her origin from the mountain to occur in the hours of the day.

Her sons are obviously happy of their mothers.

Sherpa claims that she is improving the lives of her children in the US by providing them with knowledge.

” I truly want changing my existence, my sons- I work difficult,” she says.

She wants to earn her life with her own guiding company, and to get more funding.

” I know the hills, I wish I may share my expertise and experience with another people,” she says.

Sunny and Shiny add:” Ladies have started climbing great mountains and following our grandmother’s footsteps.”

If you or someone you know are affected by the issues in this story, support is available via BBC Action Line.

Mountain Queen: The Delegations of Lhakpa Sherpa is on Netflix on 31 July.