Senior CISF officials hailed the achievement, calling it not just a personal triumph, but a landmark moment for the force and a powerful symbol of the evolving role of women in India’s uniformed services.
“Mountains are great levellers. They don’t care about your gender. Only those with that X-factor can conquer those heights,” says Geeta.
Born into a family of four sisters, she was driven from a young age by a desire to break stereotypes and carve out a path of her own. A promising hockey player during her college years, a career-ending injury cut her sporting ambitions short — a setback that unexpectedly opened the door to a new pursuit: mountaineering.
Geeta joined the CISF in 2011, where she found mountaineering to be a largely untapped field. Seizing the opportunity, she enrolled in a basic mountaineering course at the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) training institute in Auli in 2015, the only woman in her batch. Her passion and aptitude led her to complete the advanced course in 2017 — becoming the first CISF personnel to do so.
Her growing mountaineering résumé includes achievements few can match. In 2019, she became the first woman from any Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) to summit both Mount Satopanth (7,075 m) in Uttarakhand and Mount Lobuche (6,119 m) in Nepal.
Between 2021 and 2022, she successfully scaled four of them: Mount Kosciuszko (2,228 m) in Australia, Mount Elbrus (5,642 m) in Russia, Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 m) in Tanzania and Mount Aconcagua (6,961 m) in Argentina — completing the feat in just six months and 27 days, and becoming the fastest Indian woman to do so.
Back home, she also set a remarkable record in Ladakh’s remote Rupshu region by climbing five peaks — three above 6,000 m and two over 5,000 m — in just three days.
Her historic Everest summit is more than a personal milestone — it’s a call to action and a source of inspiration. Encouraged by her feat, the CISF now plans to send its first full mountaineering team to Everest in 2026.
