FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
San Francisco, California ― June 3, 2005
In May 2004, our Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition team welcomed an aspiring young female Nepalese alpinist to its Everest Base Camp to begin training for an attempt of the South Col Route the following year. This week, despite epic bad weather and a dangerously short "weather window", one of our 2004 team members successfully guided this young lady to the summit of Mount Everest, then made her his wife.
On the morning of May 30th, 2005 Mr. Pem Dorjee Sherpa (23 yrs.) and Ms. Moni Mulepati (24 yrs.) climbed to the 29, 035 ft. (8, 850 meters) summit during a brief, rare break in the season's bad weather in the Everest region. During the ten minutes they allowed themselves to remain on the summit as new storms approached, Pem Dorjee and Moni carried out their carefully planned, brief, extreme altitude marriage ceremony. They pulled aside their supplemental oxygen masks, donned ceremonial garlands, exchanged vows, and joyfully rubbed traditional red powder on each others' foreheads, a Nepalese symbol of marriage. Fellow summiteers hastily snapped photos of the happy couple.
Members of our 2004 EVEREST: Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition were very surprised and excited to learn of both the summit success and extraordinary marriage of our young team member, Pem Dorjee Sherpa. Our Expedition Leader Thomas McMillan proclaimed "On behalf of our entire team, we send Pem Dorjee and his wife Moni our heartiest congratulations and best wishes for a long and happy life climbing together. By overcoming terrible conditions on Everest this year, their love, marriage, and climbing success have all dramatically symbolized the humanitarian goals of our Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition. They have used the friendship of climbing and the spirit of the mountains to reach beyond physical, social, and cultural borders. They have worked together with mutual respect and support to overcome the huge challenges of climbing Everest this year, and they have achieved greatness. We wish them many more summits together."
There are some extraordinary aspects to the story of Pem Dorjee and Moni's success. Though Pem Dorjee is of the Sherpa ethnic group in the high mountains of Nepal, Moni is of the Newar ethnic group native to the lower altitude Kathmandu Valley region. While Pem Dorjee has reached the summit twice, first as part of the support team for the Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition in spring 2004, Moni is now the first Newar climber to ever reach the summit of Mount Everest. Though Sherpas and Newars are both considered high castes in Nepal, intermarriages are rare. In this case the love shared by Pem Dorjee and Moni of mountains and of each other, exhibited by their mutual success on the highest peak in the world, has neatly erased any supposed barriers of caste. Pem Dorjee's succinct statement, filled with the clarity of youth, has summed it up. "If some people are loving each other they have to get married," he told the BBC. "That's why we want to give all Nepali people [the message] that people are people, so there's no problem about caste." Both families are now happily preparing for a formal wedding of the couple in Kathmandu.
The goal of the 2004 EVEREST: Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition was to shatter stereotypes and preconceptions about what people can achieve, despite fearsome obstacles, when opportunities to succeed are shared through friendships. In 2005 Pem Dorjee and Moni continued this goal by using their friendship to dramatically shatter any stereotypes and preconceptions about physical, social, and cultural barriers there might have been to their personal success and happiness. They challenge all of us to reconsider what might be preventing success in our own lives.
The EVEREST: Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition
As mountaineers, we understand how huge, seemingly insurmountable problems can be overcome with commitment, persistence, optimism, and the special 'Friendship of the Rope'. In the spring of 2004 we took on the challenge of helping Nawang Sherpa realize his lifelong dream of climbing Mount Everest to demonstrate this to the world. By helping Nawang overcome his disability, we knew he could play an important role in solving health and environmental problems in his country and the world. Our EVEREST: Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition in 2004 continues to
- Demonstrate the power of international friendships to overcome the world's toughest challenges when ideas and opportunities for success are shared and people are respected.
- Raise global awareness of the extraordinary courage and talents of disabled athletes
- Provide ways to help disabled athletes become leaders in health and environmental issues in their countries and the world at large
With
the success of our EVEREST: Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition in 2004,
we are now ready to tackle new opportunities. For
further information, please visit our website at: http://friendshipbeyondborders.com/
Contact:
Linda McMillan, MBA
Public Relations Manager
EVEREST: Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition
San Rafael,
CA 94903
Phone: 415-309-7961
http://FriendshipBeyondBorders.com
contacts@FriendshipBeyondBorders.com
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