Twin sisters, Tashi and Nungshi Malik, have been climbing mountains since the age of 18. They have dedicated themselves to achieving physical and mental feats that are out of the imagination for the ordinary. The world record they set as the first female twins to climb Mount Everest on May 19, 2013, was only the first step in the mammoth achievements that awaited them in their pursuit of greatness.
Tashi and Nungshi discovered sports and their love for physical activity in high school. They played any sport that their friends or people around them played, whether it was cricket or hockey. Even though most people discouraged the twins from playing sports, claiming it was a “men’s forte,” Tashi and Nungshi’s father always supported their athletic endeavors.
In India, it’s accepted family practice to want a son to continue the lineage and legacy of the family. That mindset is still quite predominant in many states and intersections of Indian society. Sons are given preferential treatment and education, whereas women are groomed for the role of caretakers. Daughters are seen as property who need to be protected and transferred to a husband’s house when they reach the age of marriage. Generations of women have been excluded from inheritance due to what is considered social custom and culture.
Tashi and Nungshi’s father, Col. Virender Singh Malik, didn’t feel the need to conform to social standards; this led to their parents being subjected to questions such as “Do they have a brother?” and “Why didn’t you try for a son?” These normalized questions and constant commentary from society about their gender made the twins realize that even those women who are part of the affluent class in modern day India are still restricted by social expectations.
After Tashi and Nungshi finished secondary school, their dad asked what they wanted to pursue. The twins felt that they wanted to do everything in the world, but the mountains had “cast a spell on them,” so their father sent applications to the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Dehradun on behalf of his daughters in 2009. “Women are born with mountains to climb,” Tashi says, “and that has become our inspiration for climbing the mountains outside.”
As the twins were preparing for their Everest expedition in 2012, the Delhi gang rape and murder outraged and shook the conscience of the entire nation. “We too were extremely angry and wanted to do something to break social stereotypes of girls being weaker than boys,” Tashi says. “We sensed the opportunity to use this as a medium to campaign for gender equality.”
In 2013, Tashi and Nungshi scaled Everest, which led to them making another decision: they were going to scale the Seven Summits and ski on both the North and South Poles, completing the Adventurer’s Grand Slam. They wanted to send a message to the people of India that women are totally capable of anything when placed in the right environment, that “dreams are not contingent on sex.”
In light of this accomplishment, Tashi and Nungshi have spoken extensively throughout India on women’s empowerment, including a TEDx talk in New Delhi, and have been honored by the President of India and the Chief Ministers of Uttarakhand, Haryana, and Delhi. In January 2015, the sisters were named brand ambassadors for the Uttarakhand government’s Save the Girl Child campaign to improve high rates of female infant mortality and infanticide in the state. They even started their own organization, the NungshiTashi Foundation. Yet, even with all of these accolades, they both felt like there was still much to learn. They had the ideas, but Tashi and Nungshi lacked experience on a larger scale. That’s where the Global Sports Mentoring Program (GSMP) stepped in.
Tashi and Nungshi were part of the 2015 GSMP class and were mentored by Susan Cohig, Senior Vice President of Business Affairs & Integrated Marketing for the National Hockey League (NHL). Under Susan’s tutelage, they learned about leadership, networking, and entrepreneurship by engaging with the NHL Foundation and Hockey Fights Cancer, two entities addressing community issues and promoting social responsibility. The twins saw that the “challenges women face in sports are nearly the same everywhere,” and that “regular, unbiased outside views are really helpful to challenge your own view and provide support for the next steps.”
Upon returning to India with the support of a global network of women, the twins had renewed hope and an invigorated sense of purpose in educating India’s girls. Today, the NungshiTashi Foundation continues to empower India’s women through self-awareness, leadership training, and outdoor activity. They educate girls to be rising female leaders and to not let their gender keep them from realizing their potential. Tashi and Nunghsi know that “when you educate a girl, you not only educate her, but her family and the community that surrounds her. This program, in changing our lives, has changed the lives of girls in India.”