This was quite interesting, any guppans thinking of following her footsteps 
Jang
A female Pakistani trekker who doesn’t stop at anything to get where she wants to go…
By Sarwat Ali
Very few Pakistani women have been known for their wanderlust. Raheela Gul is an exception – she has infused her joy of trekking with a sense of real adventure. She is not driven by the mission of saving or preserving the environment, rather it is her keen interest in travel, and that too to places which are remote and not generally visited by swathes of mankind, that made her realise the significance of keeping the natural world as it is. Her involvement in environmental issues flows out of her desire to travel and is a by-product of her passion.
If one thinks that she is not physically prepared to undertake such an arduous journeys then one just has to take a look at her track record. Part of the mental makeup and ambitions to do things not just conventional were instilled into her during her early years as a Pakistani Norwegian. In Norway she has been to Gol, from Tromso to North Cape for the thrill of experiencing the midnight sun, to Bodo Nammerfest and Trondheim to MoI Rana in the early part of the 1990s. She has also been rock climbing in North Wales, Cornwall, Kent and Sawange.
If these places and names sound too exotic to the Pakistani ear, she has also done her stint in Egypt when in 1996 she travelled from Hurgada to Cairo, a full fifteen day trek through the sands of time during the month of April under a sweltering sun.
By then Raheela Gul thought that she was experienced and fit enough to take the highest and biggest mountain ranges in the world. It was also a sort of homecoming for her. She would be often surprised at the keen interest which trekkers and mountaineers took in traveling to Pakistan for the Himalayan and Karakorum adventures, while only very few Pakistanis were motivated to relish visiting and exploring their fabulous and still largely undiscovered mountain areas.
It was in 1997 that she went to the base camp of Nanga Parbat on the south side from Astor Valley and since then she has made a number of trips to the north west to some of the most famous mountain sites in the world. In 1998 she did the trek from Braldu to Boltoro Glacier and from Concordia to the base camp of K2. Next year she did the Rakaposhi base camp from Jaglot and Galmut, while in two thousand she crossed the Batura Glacier 11. A couple of years later she again went to the base camp of K2 and from there went up to camp 1 from the south side. She revisited the base camp of K2 in 2004 as part of the celebrations to mark the fiftieth anniversary of scaling of the second highest peak in the world.
Other than the mountains what attracts Raheela are deserts. She unsuccessfully tried to cross the Thar Desert a few years ago but that was not her last attempt at doing so. Earlier this year she succeeded where she had failed earlier by crossing Thar, Nara and Cholistan deserts, a full four hundred and fifty kilometers of trek through one of the harshest terrains in the world. Compared to this feat her small forays into the Thar, Nara and Cholistan deserts last year seemed preparatory efforts at best.
For love of adventure she has had to really prepare herself with the dedication and single minded focus of a professional. Part of her training included rock climbing and mountaineering technical skills, river crossing, evacuation and rescue, navigation, knots, abseiling, lowering and belay, single pitch climbing, use of ice axe, crampon techniques (special spikes for ice), self rescue, snow shelters, desert survival techniques, searching techniques, desert driving techniques, anti venom, first aid and knowledge about GPS (Global Positioning System). She has had training in advanced fares and ticketing from IATA, holds a diploma of Travel and Tourism from the London School of Management, another diploma in International Travel Consultant and has had first aid training from St John Ambulances, United Kingdom.
Unfortunately not enough attention is paid to Pakistanis in Pakistan who venture out and dare do things unconventional. The publicity of such adventures can dispel the perception of Pakistani society as being driven by a very narrow and focused agenda. The diversity can help change the world’s image about Pakistan and perhaps promote its softer image which the government is not tired of mouthing.
Her driving ambition to trek the Amazon through the course it flows in Latin America is as much to satiate her hunger for adventure as to make the world aware of the crucial issues for world ecology revolving round saving the rain forests. She has also been considering the idea of crossing the Sahara Desert on foot, usually left to only weather-beaten hard hitting pros.
Adventure tourism and serious mountaineering is hampered by the high costs involved in such activities. If one looks at the cost of expeditions that scale the highest peaks in the world one is astounded by the astronomical figures. And a Pakistani looking for financial support is often discouraged by the lack of willingness to sponsor such events. Despite all the good intentions and desires not much headway can be made without somebody stepping forward to foot the bill. The government often points to its empty pockets, and the corporate sector has not as yet started to see the immediate commercial benefits of such sponsorship. Till such support is forthcoming we will either be onlookers or merely porters carrying somebody else’s baggage.