Twelve year old Iram is a student of Grade 8, studying in Rockwoods High School, Udaipur.

She has been trekking since the age of 3, mostly in the Sahyadri mountains in Maharashtra. At the age of 10, she took the big leap and did her first Himalayan trek scaling the 4000 meter tall Kedarkantha peak in the winter, where she faced sub zero temperatures falling below minus 15 degrees at night . She was also amongst the first ones in the group of 20 trekkers to reach the peak at 6am to witness the sunrise from the summit.

She is the youngest female to climb Kedarkantha in winters.

Iram feels very proud of her achievements as a trekker and she loves to talk about her travel stories to her friends and cousins.

UdaipurTimes caught up with this young trekker and asked about her daily schedule and how she balances her studies with physical training for treks. Iram said that  she has been blessed with loads of energy that helps her to do multiple activities in a day. She also trains in aerobics, which keeps her active and flexible.

Iram likes all forms of art, be it drawing, painting or story writing. She plans to pursue a career as either a fashion or an interior designer. Like all other ardent trekkers she too has a goal to climb Mount Everest and that too before she turns 20.

Like most children of her age, Iram also has various dreams and aspirations. Besides becoming a fashion designer, she also wants to graduate from the prestigious Nehru Institute of Mountaineering and summit at least two eight thousander peaks in her lifetime.

Support System behind this little bundle of energy

Iram’s father, Irfan Jaipury, runs a travel and trek company. Despite having no prior trek experience, Irfan learnt the skills on the job and has now done more than fifty treks in the Himalayan region and led more than hundred groups on these treks.

Mother, Shagufta Jaipury, is an educator by profession and a very popular YouTuber. She switched careers and is now a director with ATARA Travels, their family run travel business.

Inspiration behind trekking

Children her age are either busy with their favorite cartoon shows and smartphones or with their tuitions and studies. We asked what inspired her to take trekking as a hobby at such a young age and she quickly responded that her father took her on a trek with him when she was just 3 years old. The first trek left her feeling more confident and energetic. The whole experience was so wonderful that she started looking forward to more such excursions.

Talking about her experiences on high altitude treks with her father, she narrates a couple of interesting incidents, “Once I was sleeping in a tent, it was minus 17 degrees outside, my father was waking up every 30 minutes to check if I was alive or not and this made me very angry.”

On another occasion she remembers that at an altitude of 13,800 ft in deep snow, she felt very scared as she could not find her father but after some time she started feeling better, her fear vanished as she got lost in the beauty of white snow around her.

I like the fresh and crisp mountain breeze but feel very pained to see the waste that we humans are dumping while in the mountains.