Blazing her own trail to the top

Growing up as a village girl in Solukhumbu, Yangji Sherpa couldn’t imagine she would one day become a successful businesswoman and a mountain climber.

The first place Yangji Sherpa visited when coming to Kathmandu was the Bauddhanath Stupa. Her initial reason for visiting the capital might seem whimsical—to try ice cream, a treat entirely unfamiliar to her despite growing up in a place with a lot of ice: the Everest region. On that day, Yangji probably wouldn’t have guessed that one day she would live right there—in the Bauddhanath neighbourhood—just a twenty-minute walk from one of the most popular tourist sites in the city, and that she would run a successful business and even climb the world’s highest peak.