Arunima Sinha is the first female amputee in the world to have done what?

Summit Mount Everest. She became the first female amputee in the world to summit Mount Everest, on 21 May 2013. Read more: GK0102 — Arunima Sinha: From a Train Track to the Top of Everest.

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Arunima Sinha: From a Train Track to the Top of Everest

In 2011, robbers threw her from a moving train for refusing to give up a gold chain. Two years later, Arunima Sinha stood atop Mount Everest.

📑 Contents

1The Accident, Training, the 2013 Summit, and the Seven Summits
2The Seven Summits List, Honours, and Her Mentor’s Legacy
3Test Yourself
4Precise Qualifiers, and a Shared Coaching Lineage

✊ Must Know

1. The Accident, Training, the 2013 Summit, and the Seven Summits

Fact Arunima Sinha was born on 20 July 1989, near Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. She was a national-level volleyball player before her accident.
Story In April 2011, while travelling by train, she was thrown off near Bareilly while resisting a robbery attempt. A passing train crushed her leg, which doctors amputated below the knee to save her life.
Story While recovering, she resolved to climb Mount Everest. She trained at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, then under Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to summit Everest, at the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation.
Result On 21 May 2013, after a 52-day expedition, she reached Everest’s summit. She became the first female amputee in the world to summit Everest.
Result By 2019, she completed the Seven Summits, the highest peak on every continent, becoming the first female amputee to do so.

📘 Good to Know

2. The Seven Summits List, Honours, and Her Mentor’s Legacy

Fact The Seven Summits she climbed include Everest (Asia), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Elbrus (Europe), Kosciuszko (Australia), Aconcagua (South America), Denali (North America), and Vinson (Antarctica).
Fact In 2015, the Government of India awarded her the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honour.
Fact She has gone on to become a motivational speaker and author, sharing her story widely across India and abroad.
Link Her mentor, Bachendri Pal, has separately trained other record-setting climbers at the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation, including Premlata Agarwal, the first Indian woman to complete the Seven Summits.

Test Yourself

💎 Great to Know

3. Precise Qualifiers, and a Shared Coaching Lineage

Instead Sinha is specifically the first female amputee to summit Everest, not the first amputee overall. New Zealand mountaineer Mark Inglis, a double amputee, had already summited in 2006.
Why That distinction matters for precision, without taking anything away from her own record. Different qualifiers, “first amputee” versus “first female amputee,” describe different facts.
Fact Her path shows a pattern seen elsewhere in Indian mountaineering. A single mentor, Bachendri Pal, and a single institution, the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation, have repeatedly turned individual ambition into a record-setting climb.