Hello, I'm Kinjil Pandya Vag, one of the team producing Kalki presents My Indian Life,

the podcast about life for young Indian adults in the 21st century.

We thought you would like to hear the special episode about Savita Kanswal,

an extraordinary mountain climber whose life was tragically cut short last year.

Now with the blessing of her family, we want to tell her inspiring story.

There are some amazing people all around us everywhere you look.

You might just not know it until you start talking to them,

start up a conversation, let them speak about their life,

and then you might just discover that they're extraordinary,

completely inspiring. I met someone like that. Her name was Savita Kanswal.

Savita was 26, a mountaineer, a very successful one.

She traveled to Mumbai to meet me and we spent about four hours together.

Here she's talking about how she's in love with the mountains.

That there's a lot that they've given her. Her identity, she says, that whatever she is today

is because of the mountains. My interview with Savita was going to be part of season three

of Kalki presents My Indian Life, but four months after recording our interview,

something happened, something unexpected, something awful.

After one of the world's worst mountaineering disasters, we now know at least 26 people died

in an avalanche in the Indian Himalayas on Tuesday. Today seven more bodies were recovered,

but three climbers are still missing. It was the 4th of October 2022. The avalanche was terrible,

27 people killed in the Himalayas. Savita was one of them.

It was devastating news, so many lives lost, and in such dreadful circumstances.

...