Wasfia Nazreen says she was held captive for four hours in her conquest of Carstensz Pyramid

Bangladeshi mountaineer Wasfia Nazreen and her companions had to pay $4,000 to superstitious villagers while returning to the base camp after conquering Carstensz Pyramid, the highest mountain of the Oceania region.

In an interview with BBC Bangla, the mountaineer narrated many such incredible experiences that she went through during her mission.

The 33-year old said conquering the 4,884-metre peak in Indonesia’s Papua Province was tougher than scaling Mount Everest.

She told the BBC that every step of the mission was fraught with danger and she had never thought she would come back alive.

Apart from being very steep and treacherous, the trail had other pitfalls too, Nazreen recounted.

The communities, which live around the base camp, were superstitious, she said.

While they were returning, an old man in a local village had died, for which the villagers held the mountaineering team responsible.

The villagers believed that the old man had died because of the advent of foreigners.

Nazreen told BBC Bangla that the villagers had taken them and held them in a kangaroo court for four hours. They had managed to secure their release by paying the villagers $4,000.

To reach the base camp of Carstensz Pyramid, which is locally known as Puncak Jaya, they had to walk 220 kilometres criss-crossing village after village.

“As there is a gold mine on one side of the mountain, it is infested with American and Australian mafias,” she said.

Local ethnic groups would often clash with each other with bows and arrows.

Amidst such insecurity and danger, Nazreen reached the summit on Nov 18 to become the first mountaineer from Bangladesh to conquer seven peaks of the world.

She was accompanied by Indonesian adventurer Joshua Noya.

For the last three years, she had been attempting to conquer this summit. But due to the treacherous nature of the mountain and the danger it involved, her earlier attempts had failed.  

It is a granite mountain, she described, where tight-rope walk was the only way to cross from one range to another.

“I was apprehensive about our safe return. On the day I scaled the summit, I cried like a child,” she recalled.

“While you climb the Himalayas, Sherpas clear the path for you. But here you have to do it all yourself,” she added.

She climbed the Mount Everest on May 26, 2012, the second woman from Bangladesh to do so. Before that, she had already conquered Africa’s Kilimanjaro and South America’s Aconcagua.

In other expeditions Wasfia made it to the top of Antarctica’s Vinson Massif, Europe’s Mount Elbrus and North America’s Denali.