Nepal’s first woman helicopter captain flew nearly 100 rescues in six days

Key facts Priya Adhikari is Nepal's first woman helicopter captain , and flew roughly 100 rescue missions in six days after the 26 August flood. More than 200 survivors were lifted out in the first 48 hours of the operation. She has flown over 1,000 rescue…

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Who is Priya Adhikari?

She is 40, and she was a flight attendant before she was a pilot. In 2010 she took a ride in a helicopter and, in her own words to AFAR , thought: "What the hell is this? I want to fly this machine." She went to the Philippines for the licence, came back, and…

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What the flying actually involved

The hard part of a mass rescue is not the flying. It is the traffic. Adhikari described a valley with twenty helicopters working it at once, all talking, all headed for the same pick-up point: "Just imagine 20 helicopters flying in that valley, continuously…

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She is not the only woman in Nepali rescue aviation, and the records are different

It is worth being precise, because the two get conflated. Adhikari's first is the captaincy — command of the aircraft. Phunjo Jhangmu Lama holds a different one: Nepal's first female helicopter long-line rescuer, the person who goes down the wire to the…

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What this means if you are trekking here

Helicopter rescue is the reason a serious problem at altitude in Nepal is survivable, and it is worth understanding before you need it. Three things are true at once and travellers usually only know the first. It is fast — a well-run evacuation from the…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

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