Raising the funds for the Everest expedition was a bigger Everest for me to climb personally than the real Everest. It was by far the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. I am not here to give any advice on fundraising because nothing that I tried actually worked out for me.
Expedition to Mount Everest costs 30 to 35 lakh rupees (50,000 USD). Yes, it is that expensive. The cost includes a very expensive climbing permit, 8000 meter clothing and equipment’s, logistics for 2 months, Sherpa guide cost, travel, insurance, pre-Everest training, Sherpa summit bonus and a lot more small costs.
I don’t have that kind of money at this age neither am I from a rich family. Spending 50,000 USD for a mountaineering expedition seemed like an impossible idea. I remember this moment very vividly when I shared the idea of climbing Everest to my parents. It was August 2017 and I was aiming for 2019 spring season for my attempt on Everest. It was evening time and my parents got home from work and I told them that I want to attempt Everest in 2019. I saw a look on their faces saying ‘not again’. They had just accepted the idea of me not pursuing a career in engineering that I had just graduated from 2 months earlier. Their initial reaction was NO WAY because they had heard of all the horror stories of Everest. The deaths, the accidents, the amputations and a lot more and I absolutely understand their concern. Later that evening during dinner time, I told my dad that the expedition to Everest costs 50,000 USD and he was like ‘okay, where are you getting this money from?’ It hit me and got me thinking. I have no idea how to raise funds. I am very bad at marketing, in fact I had never even made a presentation in my life.
The first thought that would come into anybody’s mind is sponsorship. I have seen brands sponsoring mountaineering athletes all the time. I started writing to big companies in India which I thought might be interested in sponsoring me. I also managed to make a sponsorship proposal presentation by myself and started meeting people and presenting to them my goal of climbing Everest and asking for support. Everyone I spoke to showed no interest in supporting me whatsoever. In a span of 2 years, I wrote to around 500 companies and not even 10 of my emails even got any response. Despite of all the meetings, running around, finding contacts, setting up meetings and all the convincing, nothing really worked out in my favor. Not even one company gave me a single rupee. I realized soon enough how difficult this journey of fundraising is going to be. Corporates in India are not particularly interested to invest in mountaineering athletes. Nevertheless, I was not ready to give up even after being rejected from over a 150 companies personally. My goals were much bigger than disappointment
The other idea I had in my mind was to seek help from my state Maharashtra government. I had heard of this fact that Maharashtra government gave 25 lakh rupees to each the Tribal kids who summited Everest in 2018 and 10 lakh to the ones who were not able to summit. This gave me a lot of hopes that my state government would help me out too. I went to Mantralaya and gave in my application request to the Sports Ministry of Maharashtra. At this time, I was deep into the training regime for Everest. After I gave in the application, I used to travel 2 hours one way every day to Mantralaya from my mountain house in Karjat, just to learn that somedays they have lost my application, or on some days the concerned officer is not there, or asking for various documents out of no where. Every day after my morning training hike, I travelled 2 hours just to see how inefficient my state governments system really was. This running around went on for practically 4 months.
One fine day I met a very high ranking officer in the sports dept. I wish I could name him here. He sat me down and blatantly told me eye to eye that there is no policy for mountaineering in our state and that he doesn’t consider mountaineering as a sport and that he didn’t consider us, mountaineers as athletes who deserved support. He told me that they are allocating all the funds to the sports involved in the Olympics. I left the office with tears in my eyes, not because I wasn’t going to get any support from but because of this fact that our government does not consider mountaineering as a sport. It was now clear that I wasn’t going to get anything from here. I learnt that the Tribal kids got the money because supporting them would help the govt. with respect to vote banks. Helping me wouldn’t serve that purpose because people high up, don’t really care about promoting an upcoming athlete or the sport.
I wrote to the Sports Ministry in Delhi via email and they promptly replied by denying any support because there is no policy to support an INDIVIDUAL ATHLETE in mountaineering. If I were a team or an organization, only then I am eligible to get funds from the central government. Now where the hell does an individual athlete go? What kind of a nonsense policy is this? Will I not be representing my city, my state, my country and the youth of India? it was beyond my understanding but this gate was closed too.
I didn’t know where to go now or what to do. I was clueless. Everywhere I had hopes for to get some support from, nothing worked out. I didn’t raise a single rupee from all this running around. One day, a friend of mine told me to try crowdfunding. I didn’t even know what crowdfunding was. I learnt that it is basically asking money from people in form of contribution. I was never the kind who had ever asked money from anyone. It was a big no with me and even with my family. But I thought let’s keep the ego aside because what I want to do is much bigger than my stupid ego. I told my parents to start speaking to everyone they know and ask for contributions for my expedition. It was extremely difficult even for them but they believed in me and they wanted the expedition to happen and this is when things really changed for me. My relatives, my friends, my well-wishers actually started to contribute. From 10 rupees to 5 lakh rupees, everyone came forward and contributed according to their capacity. Everyone had seen my journey, my struggles, my hard work and my obsession with Everest. All of them contributed because they believed in me. I owe a lot to each and every person who contributed from their hard earned money for my dream. In todays times, people will let go off their loved ones but they wont let go off a single rupee. In a time like this, getting monetary support was overwhelming and it gave me the confidence to go on and to keep trying. I remember this one gesture. A friend of mine broke his fix deposit in his bank and gave me 50,000 rupees. For me, more than the money, it was the feeling and the positive energy of everyone who contributed that really mattered to me.
Through crowdfunding, I raised around 40% of the amount. Another 30% were added by my dad and from the savings that I had. I had decided to climb Everest from the North-East Ridge in Tibet and the final date to apply for the permits were 28th February 2019. By 25th Feb, I only had 70% of the amount with me. I had no idea how I would raise the remaining 30%. Every resource I had was already invested, every contact I had was already exhausted. I don’t know what got into me but I contacted Satori Adventure , the adventure company I had decided to go with and told them to apply for the permit and confirm my trip. I was taking a huge leap of faith because if I am not able to raise the remaining 30% in 20 days, I will lose 8 lakh rupees (11,000 USD) that I have paid for permit and 2 lakh rupees (3000 USD) for the oxygen bottles that were ordered for me plus a Sherpa guide was also assigned to me and paid for by the company on my behalf. Shit was real and I had no idea how the money will come.
The next 20 days were the most stressful days of my life. There was hardly any training that was happening, I was not able to eat properly or sleep properly. I was asking for loans from everyone and anyone I met. Each day, each hour mattered now. On the other side, my dad was running around just as much as I was. Due to his good contacts and relations with people, he was able to get most of the loans needed to fill the gap. Just as I was about to completely lose all hopes, my dad had secured most of the amount. Satori adventures was kind enough and agreed that I would pay 10% of the amount after the expedition.
This is how I raised the funds for Everest. I am repaying the loans now and it is going to take me a long time to come out of that hole. But let me tell you this, it was all worth it. Every minute of struggle and stress turned out to be worth it with the kind of experiences I had on Everest. I realized that the real problem and the reason why I was not able to raise the funds was lack of awareness about this sport at a grass root level. My mission and objective behind climbing is to raise awareness about mountaineering at a grass root level. Even if you don’t play football, you sure know who Ronaldo is. Similarly even if one does not climb mountains, they should know who is in the game and what is happening. Kids should also idolize mountaineers as their role models. People should follow mountaineering expeditions just as they follow any other game. This is my vision for mountaineering as a sport.
Now to make this happen, changes on a policy level in the government must happen. In the coming years I am willing to commit my time in working with the government to draft policies and get adventure sports into the mainstream sports so that an upcoming athlete in this sector should never have to go through the kind of struggle that I went through. Athletes deserve better. Complaining and cribbing wont help. It is time for us mountaineers in India to unite and work with the government hand in hand and bring about practical changes. This is the beginning of a long term solution.
Thank you for reading my blog. Cheers!