Leader of the Asha group of Zoroastrian mountain climbers in Kerman, Dr Fereshte Bakhtiari has been scaling peaks since 2012. After climbing the well-known Damavand mountain of Iran and the lesser known ones like Hazar, Lalehzaar, Bazargan, Taftan and Dena, in March 2015 she progressed to the Himalayan mountains and reached the first base camp of the Everest.
Although emails in circulation in April stated that she had conquered the Everest, in a subsequent interview with Ashkan Khosropour who spoke to her on behalf of Parsiana she revealed that her group of four members with Bakhtiari being the only Zarathushti climber reached the first base camp. "This part was so hard to climb. It takes about two or three days to get to the peak but it takes much longer (about two weeks) to reach the first base camp…Fortunately there were no major difficulties for me as a woman and everything went well,” she revealed although she referred to the difficulty in carrying warm clothes and other materials up the mountain.
Dr Fereshte Bakhtiari at the Himalayas
In another interview with Farhad Iranfar forwarded by Azita Dehmobed, secretary of The Zoroastrian Society of British Columbia, Bakhtiari related that her group spent three days in Nepal and the rest on the mountains. With non-vegetarian food being in short supply they had to eat more vegetables and beans which they felt was not as nourishing, causing members of the expedition to lose their confidence and patience.
They timed their trip during the Navroz celebrations when they have 13 days of holidays so that they would not need to take extensive leave. With a letter from the mountain climbing organization in Kerman, her leave was sanctioned and she was able to fly out of Iran on March 16 and return on April 6, 2015. For fear of causing anxiety to her mother who is suffering from diabetes, Bakhtiari did not divulge to her the full details of her destination. In the absence of any sponsorship, each member spent Rls 78,721,200 (Rs 170,100) on the trip with some members taking bank loans to finance the expedition to the base camp.
To acclimatize herself to the cold clime in the Himalayas, as part of her six-month preparation she spent the last winter in Iran living in a cold room without any heater. She would also run for two or three hours regularly to strengthen her body for the arduous journey.
Whilst Mt Damavand can be scaled in three or four days, it takes 24 days to reach Mt Everest where the temperature goes down to -28ºC, she explained. Although the difficulty levels of scaling Mt Damavand and Mt Everest are incomparable, Bakhtiari stated, "As a Zoroastrian Iranian I have a different kind of feeling about my beloved Mt Damavand. It is the dream of all Iranian climbers to get to its peak.” With respect to the call of the Himalayas she is hopeful that "in the near future I will go there again… Due to the last earthquakes in those areas I am not sure if I would be able to go back soon.”
For Bakhtiari, mountain climbing is a hobby that she enjoys. By profession she is a professor at the Shahid Bahonar University in Kerman, having obtained her doctorate in chemical engineering from the same institution.