In November 2024, a little over a year after retiring from the Delhi High Court, Justice Poonam A Bamba boarded a flight to Nepal with surprisingly little idea of what she had signed up for.

The plan, if it could even be called that, belonged largely to her husband. She had not spent years preparing for Everest Base Camp, researching trekking routes or training for high-altitude endurance. In fact, she says she was never even supposed to go.

"My husband was going. I wasn't even going to go initially," she says, laughing at the memory. "I remember thinking, 'How did this idea get into this man's head?' Eventually, only one person agreed to go with him. I thought to myself — if he can do this at 66, why can't I?"

That impulsive moment of solidarity would take Justice Bamba — who spent 19 years in the Delhi judiciary — across suspension bridges, through dense Himalayan forests, past glaciers and frozen rivers, and all the way to the Mount Everest Base Camp at 5,364 metres. She was 64 years old. 

What followed was ten days of walking nearly eight hours a day, covering over 65 kilometres of some of the most breathtaking and unforgiving terrain on the planet.

What she expected to be a physically demanding trek slowly became something far more reflective. Months later, while speaking about the journey, Justice Bamba returns repeatedly to the same ideas: fear, ageing, discipline and the strange confidence that comes from discovering your body can do more than you assumed.

A plan that was never made

Anil Bamba, Justice Bamba's husband, is a former bureaucrat and an inveterate traveller who has visited around 100 countries. The EBC trek had been on his radar for a while. Finding companions proved harder.

Before the trip, Justice Bamba consulted a contact in the Air Force's Mountain Flying Division, who assessed her fitness and gave her a cautious but encouraging nod. Beyond that, she did not train. "My friend told me you're taking this very lightly," she says. She disagrees. "I believe something like this has more to do with your mind and your mental makeup."

Her preparation, it turned out, was simply a disciplined life. She wakes early and........

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