Records & People
Phunjo Jhangmu Lama is Nepal's first woman qualified to fly high-altitude long-line helicopter rescues, and in May 2024 she climbed Everest from Base…
By Laxman Rawal · Aug 13, 2026
Phunjo Jhangmu Lama does two of the most dangerous jobs in the Himalaya — and she is either the first or the fastest at both. She is Nepal's first female helicopter long-line rescuer , the person who hangs on a cable slung beneath a hovering helicopter to…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Phunjo Jhangmu Lama grew up in Chokangparo, a village in the remote Tsum Valley of Gorkha district, tucked into the same Manaslu massif that our trekkers cross on the restricted-area circuit. She became the first woman from that region to stand on top of…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Most people picture a mountain rescue as a helicopter landing on a ledge. At Himalayan altitude that is often impossible — there is nowhere flat, the air is too thin for the rotors to bite, and a casualty may be pinned on a slope or in a crevasse. The…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Phunjo first set the women's Everest speed record in 2018. Hong Kong's Ada Tsang took it in 2021. In May 2024 Phunjo took it back — and rewrote it emphatically. She left Base Camp in the afternoon and reached the summit before dawn the next morning, an ascent…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Nepal's high-altitude economy — guiding, rope-fixing, rescue flying — has been almost entirely a men's world. The porters, the Sherpa climbing guides , the icefall doctors and the rescue crews are overwhelmingly male, and the risks are real: more people die…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
You will not be speed-climbing anything. But the Khumbu that made Phunjo is open to any reasonably fit walker, and the way to see it well is with the same local guides, porters and rescue relationships that underpin her world. Our 14-day Everest Base Camp…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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