Wasfia Nazreen is a Bangladeshi mountaineer and human rights advocate known for blending adventure with activism. She is the first Bangladeshi to climb the Seven Summits and the only Bengali to summit K2, one of the world’s most dangerous peaks. Her expeditions serve as spiritual practice and a platform for women’s rights in Bangladesh, earning her National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year in 2014.
Wasfia Nazreen is a Bangladeshi mountaineer and human rights advocate known for blending adventure with activism. She is the first Bangladeshi to climb the Seven Summits and the only Bengali to summit K2, one of the world’s most dangerous peaks. Her expeditions serve as spiritual practice and a platform for women’s rights in Bangladesh, earning her National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year in 2014.
Connect with Wasfia:
Listen to:
Thank you to our sponsors:
Wasfia Nazreen:
Every mountain that I've climbed in my life, I try to connect to the spirit before even approaching the mountain because it's not a conquering feat. We don't conquer any part of nature. It's a very surrendering, devotional, spiritual journey, or almost like a pilgrimage for me.
Shelby Stanger:
That's Wasfia Nazreen, a woman who has redefined what it means to be a mountaineer and a human rights advocate. She's the first Bangladeshi to climb the Seven Summits and the only Bengali to reach the top of K2, one of the deadliest peaks on earth. But what makes Wasfia extraordinary isn't the mountains she summited. It's why she climbs them. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.
For Wasfia Nazreen, every big mountain expedition is both a spiritual practice and a form of activism. In 2014, National Geographic named her Adventure of the Year while she was climbing the Seven Summits. The goal of this project was to raise awareness about women's rights and progress in her home country of Bangladesh. When she isn't climbing mountains, Wasfia travels the world, inspiring others to push their limits and connect with nature. Wasfia Nazreen, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You have truly lived a wild life.
Wasfia Nazreen:
Thank you, Shelby and REI for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
Of course. Where are you right now?
Wasfia Nazreen:
I'm sitting in a studio in Venice Beach, California.
Shelby Stanger:
Awesome. I want to get into Los Angeles because you grew up in such a different place. So let's just start from the beginning. Where did you grow up and what was your relationship to nature growing up as a kid?
Wasfia Nazreen:
I was born and raised up to my adult life in a country called Bangladesh. It's a very young country. My parents lived through the Independence War. And so yeah, everything about Bangladesh is related to nature. My dad worked in shipping, and so we were in the Bay of Bengal, which is the largest delta on the planet. As a kid, I have clear images of witnessing the Mother's fury, like typhoons, floods.
Anything and everything that you can think of happened in front of our eyes. We have villages after villages that are taken over by the river every monsoon season. So growing up, without even having anyone teaching us, we kind of knew who the boss in the room was. It was Mother Nature. We lived at her mercies. And throughout our cultural or historical stories, there's just this whole adoration or this word in Western world, like devotion towards Mother.
Shelby Stanger:
That's so interesting, and also just as we are shifting in a world where natural disasters are happening more in places like Los Angeles and San Diego.
Wasfia Nazreen:
Texas. Everywhere.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, Texas. How did you get to the United States?
Wasfia Nazreen:
So a little bit about before coming to United States, I come from a broken family. It's a very long story, but in short, my parents were divorced when I was 12 going into 13 and I was kind of moved into a relative's house to... Just to give background about South Asian girl, in our society, the ultimate summit for any girl is marriage. And so at that time, even as a young adolescent, I could tell that I became a burden for my relatives and I wanted to just get out of there.
I just didn't want to be a weight on any of my relative's shoulders who thought from their very good intention that they needed to marry me off. And so I wanted to run away from that, and the only way to get out was education for me. And so I requested my aunt at that time, who I had moved into my relative's house in the capital, and I requested her to strategically put me in an English medium school at that age.
Because in my mind, my ticket out was college. That's the only way. Because if I lived back in Bangladesh and went to college there, the next step would be, "Hey, where do we marry her off?" Because here I was carrying the shame of the family as the girl, right? So fast-forward to when I turned I think 17 going into 18, I applied to a whole bunch of colleges around the world, and then this one college in the US gave me 100% scholarship.
And because I had no money, without thinking twice, I chose that college and had the vision in my mind that I was coming to New York because that's all I knew about America. And my college was in Decatur, Georgia.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah. I went to school one city away from Decatur, Georgia at Emory at the exact same time that you were there. And it's a shock. It was culturally different than San Diego.
Wasfia Nazreen:
It was culturally different than anywhere. And there was this whole dirty South hip hop genre movement was going on. Culturally, what I learned about America by going to Atlanta, I wouldn't change that for a thing in the world. No. I think it was the most diverse experience I could have gotten.
Shelby Stanger:
It's so interesting talking to you because I've talked to a ton of mountaineers, but none have had your background. What was the very first time you ever climbed a mountain?
Wasfia Nazreen:
Depends how you define a mountain. So now I do big mountains, so it's kind of embarrassing talking about the younger ones. When can you call a mountain a mountain? But in Bangladesh, from a child's perspective, my first mountain or hill was at the age of six. There's a temple on top of it. It's called Chandranath Temple, and the mountain is called Chandranath.
And it's in Chittagong. It's barely like 1,200 feet, but at that time it looked major and all my relatives were struggling at the bottom of it. And my dad actually reminded me when I summited Everest that that was my first mountain is I was there before anyone and apparently I was sitting inside the temple.
Shelby Stanger:
It sounds like you're naturally athletic, but you also have this desire to really push yourself outside of your comfort zone.
Wasfia Nazreen:
I mean, honestly, when I look back, I have, astrologically speaking, certain placement in my chart too. I'm very driven since I was a kid. I was very like, as a child, the things I had to do at the age of 12 before I even got my period, not having a single parent to look after you, I think those were the real mountains I climbed. And I just didn't want to be one of those young women who gets married off. Trauma takes you places, girl. So the short answer to how I get to the mountaintops is unresolved childhood trauma.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm only laughing because someone just asked me like, "What are all the participants of your podcast share in common?" I was like, "Well, not all of them, but a lot have had..."
Wasfia Nazreen:
Unresolved childhood trauma.
Shelby Stanger:
Or just trauma or also just a strong desire to be a better person. But a lot of them who do this super extreme stuff, yeah, I mean, you got to work some stuff out.
Wasfia Nazreen:
Yeah. And I also recognized that, forget about mountains, even as an expedition expert or managing expeditions or designing your own expeditions, like the chaos that goes in leading up to an expedition. I think it's a replica of the chaos that I went through as a child, and that's why I do so well. And even though now I've gone through years of therapy, I'm much more calmer, I'm trauma free, whatever, but I still love the chaos of it because I'm a problem solver. Otherwise, it's just boring.
Shelby Stanger:
Throughout her childhood, Wasfia learned how to create calm in a world of chaos. That skill turned out to be incredibly valuable as she figured out her next steps. When she was in college, Wasfia visited India for a research project. The last stop on her trip was especially impactful.
Wasfia Nazreen:
In that trip, which was a very long trip, and there were several locations that I had to go to, the last destination was a place called Dharamshala in northern part of India, which is where the exiled Tibetan people from Tibet are based. So those who may not be aware, Tibet, the country, was occupied by China in 1949. And since then, millions of Tibetans have become refugees all around the world.
And the first place that they come to is that northern tip of India that I'm talking about. And I still remember sitting there bawling my eyes out thinking like, "Look at these people who's lost their whole motherland." They've gone through extreme torture and dictatorship and harassment and all kinds of negative things that you can think of.
And so on that flight back, I was reflecting on all of that and I just instinctly knew that there was something waiting for me in Dharamshala and I didn't know what that was. And the timeline at that point was that I would come back to Decatur, Georgia, graduate, and I was supposed to move to San Francisco after that. But in that flight back, I just made a hardcore decision that, nope, I'm coming back.
Shelby Stanger:
Wasfia decided to move to Dharamshala. She sold her belongings in the States and bought a one-way ticket back to India. Once she arrived, she found work as a journalist and began building her new life. She immersed herself in Tibetan Buddhism, started a deep meditation practice, and ended up forming a relationship with the Dalai Lama himself.
Wasfia Nazreen:
So in Dharamshala, everything is kind of based around the Tibetan diaspora, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama is based out of there. So a lot of people has moved to the town because of the work, the human rights work or any kind of work related to Tibetan people. So I became Dharamshala correspondent for the largest Tibetan English newspaper at that time because entire news media is controlled by Chinese Communist Party and there's zero news coming out about Tibetans.
So I became kind of by default an informer because I was a journalist, but I had to secretly go in and out of Tibet, Dharamshala, India, Nepal, all of these territories where Tibetans were there. And in fact, for a lot of years, I used a pseudonym because of my own safety. And so the most important person in the diaspora is obviously the Dalai Lama. And part of my work, which I didn't know at that time, was to follow His Holiness around.
So by default, the first official gig of my adult life was the special correspondent for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Way before even meeting him, just being around his presence brought a certain level of... My mind just went... You would prepare for so much every time, but there's nothing that exists in their presence. It's just love and compassion. So it was one of the most blissful time of my life, even when I look back now.
Shelby Stanger:
Dharamshala is nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas in Northern India. There, Wasfia lived in a humble house with limited heat and electricity. Still, it was a magical time for her, and she was able to focus on her spirituality and meditation practice. Over the next seven years, Wasfia built a community of friends who all climb mountains together.
Wasfia Nazreen:
Because of the region that we were in, like the nearest places was... There was no pubs. There was like 5,000, 6,000 meter peaks where my friends were climbing. So I just went over the weekend to learn. But anyway, long story short, it was during that period that I was going off to 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 meter peaks. And I realized that, regardless of how long or short these journeys were, these were kind of like pilgrimages.
Shelby Stanger:
These weekend trips had a big impact on Wasfia. For one thing, Trekking and the Himalayas helped her develop a more spiritual connection to the mountains. For another, the friends she was climbing with were active in the Free Tibet Movement, and spending time with them led her to do more human rights advocacy work. Eventually, she started working full-time at a nonprofit that focused on women's empowerment.
Wasfia Nazreen:
So I reached a point in my development career where I realized that Bangladesh by itself had really progress in terms of women's rights. That was basically my concentration on stopping violence against women. And so while I was reaching kind of like a peak in my development career, I was also wanting to get out of it because I felt like I had given enough and I had reached a place where I didn't really grow anymore from my work.
I would work and then whatever I would have saved little money, I would go off to the mountains. So I was in Nepal in 2010 when I took the decision that I would jump on this campaign called Bangladesh on Seven Summits, where I would physically go walk to the highest mountain of every continent, which figuratively portrays what women in our country go through on a daily basis without even having to step on a mountain.
And then also, Bangladesh at that time hadn't been to any of these mountaintops. So it was, A, putting Bangladesh on top of every continental summits, but also highlighting at the same time how far women in our country had come and also recognize how far we can still go. So that was my mission for the Seven Summits.
Shelby Stanger:
So when you go do this, you don't have a ton of money. You've been human rights activist and a journalist.
Wasfia Nazreen:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
You don't just contact Adidas or The North Face and be like, "Hey, I'm climbing." How do you fund this?
Wasfia Nazreen:
Another humongous leap of faith. Thank God I was 27. If it was now, I would think differently. People didn't have much exposure on mountains in Bangladesh to begin with. All they knew was Everest. And so for them to fund me for smaller mountains was a mission. So A, before I even announced the campaign, I sold off everything that I could, got rid of my rented apartment, moved into a friend's parents' home.
So I minimized all my cost, then took out a bunch of personal loans, ended up taking a bank loan. Now, I don't know about American system or anyone who's listening from different country, what your country's system is, but in Bangladesh at that time, we only had bank loans for college education, buying a car and a fridge or something like that. There was no provision to give bank loan for climbing a mountain.
So to convince the board of a Bangladeshi owned bank to give me money for trips that I may not return from was probably one of the hardest mountain I have climbed.
Shelby Stanger:
In 2011, Wasfia decided to combine her passion for mountaineering with her humanitarian work by climbing the Seven Summits of the world. Wasfia Nazreen started the Seven Summits by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 2011. From there, she summited Mount Aconcagua in Argentina before preparing to attempt Mount Everest in Nepal.
Each expedition pushed her limits as she confronted thin air, freezing temperatures, and difficult terrain. Although all of these climbs were physically grueling, the biggest challenges were mental and spiritual. What do the mountains do for you? Because every time you climb one, you could die. There's all sorts of horrific things you go through.
Wasfia Nazreen:
I always feel a different person when I come back from a big mountain. So when I'm talking about big mountain, I mean dead zone mountains or the Himalayan mountains. So that's where I started my career to begin with. Every mountain that I've climbed in my life, I try to connect to the spirit before even approaching the mountain. And I think this humility... And I bring up humility because in big mountains, you see how different egos come out.
Some of the egos of our mountaineers is bigger than the mountains they have climbed. And I don't align with that. I think because I also have seen majority of these mountaineers in their worst days and how it's not a conquering feat. We don't conquer any part of nature. It's a very surrendering, devotional spiritual journey or almost like a pilgrimage for me.
Shelby Stanger:
Will you tell me a little bit about that process? What's your approach to climbing a mountain? I'm curious how it's a spiritual practice for you versus something to climb up, take an Instagram photo and come down and whatever it is. I mean, everybody has their own mountain and way of climbing it, but yours is a little bit different than people I've interviewed.
Wasfia Nazreen:
Yeah. Most Sherpa people actually climb this way. So let's talk about Chomolungma.
Shelby Stanger:
Chomolungma is Everest also is the Western name. Okay.
Wasfia Nazreen:
So her entity, it means the goddess of inexhaustible giving, which means she will never stop giving you only and only if you follow and abide by her rules. So there are scriptures that are dedicated to her that are hundreds of years old. There are certain prayer rituals. I'm not saying you have to do this. I'm just saying that was my process. So that was introduced to me by my teacher, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. So I tried certain practices to connect with Miyolangsangma, who's the goddess of inexhaustible giving.
Way before even approaching the mountain, I would connect with her or try to connect with her in meditation. And then before going to let's say in Basecamp, we make an altar and have a Puja, which Puja means a prayer ceremony, where we even bring in animate objects like the ice ax or ropes or things that we would be hitting the mountain with because the whole mountain is her body. And then we ask for forgiveness on behalf of ice ax, like everything that we bring.
And the scriptures literally asks for forgiveness from her beforehand and says that we will move only when you show us the signs that our path has been made safe. And then there are certain signs that we look for. For example, a raven sitting on a mask. And then only when we get the positive signs, we have a celebration with barley and a lot of whiskey. That's what Sherpa people will give. But I climbed Chomolungma when I was 29. I'm still benefiting from her at this age of 43 because she doesn't stop giving.
Shelby Stanger:
So I'm curious though, the Dalai Lama was instrumental in that climb. And not everybody can say, no one I've interviewed is like, "Oh yeah, the Dalai Lama was the one who told me to..." And I know through your work, part of your work was to shadow the Dalai Lama, but anybody who can connect with him is so lucky. So I'm just curious, what did he teach you and impart with you that you think you took with you that really helped you on Chomolungma?
Wasfia Nazreen:
So with His Holiness, I also had formal education. But aside from any formal teachings that I've gotten from him, just being around him and the simple things that he says or the laughters he gives. There's certain realization that happens in your own mind if you're connected to that energy. There were years of mentorship where he tried to help me heal in many different ways without actually being direct about it, but take on the suffering that I was still holding against my parents.
So whenever I would hit a roadblock with my mom, for example, there were certain things he asked me to practice, and then Holiness would always say, "But who cares? Your biggest mother is Mother Earth. You're always disconnected. Ha ha ha ha ha." And so I didn't quite realize what he was referring to. And then leading up to, it was kind of parallel, like leading up to the big mountains.
And so when I told him that I was going to go for Everest was part of the Seven Summits, somehow he turned the lens onto Chomolungma as my mother and starting from the scripture to how to approach her in certain practices, all of that was taught by him over time.
Shelby Stanger:
Before Wasfia set out to climb Everest, she started visualizing it in her meditations. In framing Everest as her mother, Wasfia felt a stronger connection to the mountain. That connection instilled a sense of confidence in her, regardless of the challenges she might face.
After months of physical training and a lot of spiritual work, Wasfia and her friend and climbing partner, Nima, started their summit push late in the season. Conditions were rough. Avalanches were ripping through the Khumbu Icefall, and the weather windows were closing almost as fast as they opened. It had been the deadliest season on the mountain since 1996.
Wasfia Nazreen:
Surviving out there mentally I think is one of the biggest thing that we have to overcome. I've seen international very high class athletes back off because they couldn't mentally deal with it because Everest gives you a reason to give up every single day. Every single moment, there's a reason to give up. So to not give up and stay there when things are being destroyed and you're in an avalanche and your things have been broken. And every time that would happen on Everest, I would be given a dream to move forward.
There are many, many stories of Sherpa people dreaming her too. Many other Sherpas has... They have abandoned their climbs because Chomolungma would come in their dream and tell them that you're overdoing it, back off. And towards the end of my expedition, my camp got destroyed literally right before the summit push, which people may be familiar that summit push happens towards the end of the season. And so in that season, there were only three nights that we could go up in.
It became the second-deadliest season. I've had friends die, not my expedition, but during that same season. So mentally, crossing dead bodies, just surviving out there, when my camp got destroyed, there was literally every single person told me, "There's no way you can get to the top. These are the options." But I was given certain dreams and then I have goods webs down. On the last night, last two nights, I felt like a force was pulling me from my center. It's like this goddess energy is like, "Come."
And me and Nima reached on top of the world at the time that the sun was rising, which is still one of the most, if not the most beautiful experience of my life. And by the time I came down, everything was different for me. My reality was very different.
Shelby Stanger:
On May 26th, 2012, Wasfia summited Mount Everest. Shortly after her descent, she went to visit the Dalai Lama.
Wasfia Nazreen:
He always gives me an amulet before any big journey, and that amulet had broken during that Lhotse avalanche crack at the middle. And so later, many months later when I actually summited and came back, I took the broken amulet back to him. And then he just said, "Time for a new one. Ha ha ha," and then give me another new one. But I brought him some water from the summit of Chomolungma because I had seen how much devotion he has towards Chomolungma.
And by the time that... Well, it was ice from the summit. By the time that ice went from the summit of Everest to Kathmandu to Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, to Delhi, to Dharamshala, it was the stinkiest liquid. I still remember carrying it, standing in line, going to Holiness. And I'm like, "Oh my God, how am I even going to present it to him?" Before I even presented, because he was being narrated that this is water from the top of Chomolungma.
And I remember thinking in my mind, "Whatever you do, Holiness, don't drink it." And in Tibetan practice, they have to offer it when you receive such a sacred thing. So he offered it four times in four direction. And the next thing he does is puts it in his mouth. And I went, "Oh my God, if something happens to him. Oh no!" And then he put it on his altar and prostrate it to Chomolungma.
Thankfully, nothing happened to him. No diarrhea. Nothing. No. Just seeing his devotion, and not just him, all the Tibetans who are around him, how revered this mountain entity is to them was super humbling.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, this story is so interesting. I also really like that the Dalai Lama gave you a lot, but I think indirectly he taught you the power of humor. He kind of laughs at these really big, intense situations.
Wasfia Nazreen:
I think one of the, because there's so much I can talk about, but one of the greatest thing he has done for me is like, he's made me look at my own tragedies and my own powers to transform them into comedies.
Shelby Stanger:
After Everest, Wasfia climbed Mount Vinson in Antarctica, Mount Elbrus in Russia, and Denali in Alaska. In November of 2015, she climbed the last of the Seven Summits, Karstensz Pyramid in West Papua. While she was finishing up the project, National Geographic named Wasfia Adventurer of the Year, not just for climbing the Seven Summits, but for the purpose and meaning behind her climbs. Wasfia never treated the mountains as a personal bucket list.
The project was a mission to show girls in Bangladesh that they can take up space and trust the strength of their own bodies. Today, Wasfia is still climbing and pushing her limits. In 2022, she became the first Bangladeshi and the only Bengali person to summit K2, one of the most dangerous peaks. She trains at Gold's Gym and currently is taking on new expeditions. To learn more about Wasfia and her adventures, check her out on social media @WasfiaNazreen.
To trek with Wasfia to Nepal, please check out her company, High Karma, @HighKarma. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger. Produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.