17,598 Feet Up: Duke Employee Reaches Everest Base Camp in Nepal

After 14 days, thin air and miles of rocky trails, Monika Anand stood at the foot of the world’s highest peak, bringing Duke spirit every step of the way

A woman in a yellow winter coat and Duke cap stands in front of a rock at Everest Base Camp.
Monika Anand overcame elevation gains of 8,215 feet and frigid 7-degree Fahrenheit weather to hike to Everest Base Camp in April. Photo courtesy of Monika Anand

Somewhere along the rocky hiking path that leads to the highest point on Earth, Monika Anand began lagging. If she’s being honest, Anand, a Duke Assistant Research Practice Manager, was often among the last to arrive at camp each day on her 14-day guided trek to Everest Base Camp. She frequently lagged.

The route, which she traveled in late April, took her from Lukla, Nepal, at an elevation of 9,383 feet, to the camp at the base of Mount Everest, situated at 17,598 feet. That meant Anand, her husband, Mukesh, and 26 of their new best friends in the group would climb 8,215 feet – with the air getting thinner with each step.

“You would walk four or five steps and have to stop to breathe,” Anand said.

But one time when she paused to gather her breath, Mukesh Anand pulled out his phone.

“Come on, the Blue Devils never give up!” he said, with laughter on the edge of his voice as he recorded her. “Come on, Blue Devils!”

Monika Anand slowly took a few more steps and smiled. Atop her head, a blue-and-white knit cap broadcast a stylized “D” for Duke in the center with “Blue Devils” stitched across the middle.  

“Yep, Blue Devils go to the end,” she said to her husband as she kept walking.

The experience was unlike anything Anand had done before – she said she and her husband “hardly ever go to the gym, we don’t exercise much.” She credits this year’s Get Moving Challenge, Duke’s annual team-based fitness challenge organized by LIVE FOR LIFE, Duke’s employee wellness program, for preparing her for the trek.

A woman in a yellow coat stands in a valley between mountains.
Monika Anand's yellow coat stands out amid the sweeping scenery in Nepal on the way to Everest Base Camp. Photo courtesy of Monika Anand

Anand and her husband made it to Everest Base Camp (EBC) on April 30, with Anand proudly wearing her Duke cap “almost every day,” Mukesh said, through elevation gains and frigid weather that hovered around 7 degrees Fahrenheit at times over 14 days of hiking.

“I get speechless remembering how beautiful it was,” Anand said. “And remembering the beauty of the human connection.”

Monika Anand wore her Duke hat most days she hiked to Everest Base Camp in April. Photos courtesy of Monika Anand

Anand, age 56, and her husband, 58, agreed to join friends on the Everest Base Camp hike late last year, knowing that the trek would include daily hikes of 8 to 9 kilometers – or about 5 miles per day. The tour group Anand used recommended 7 to 8 kilometers of “walking or jogging six days a week, 15 minutes of Pranayama every day and 10 to 15 minutes of climbing stairs” for about four months before the expedition.

That happened to coincide with Duke’s Multi Site Trials Service Center (MiSTiC) forming a Get Moving Challenge team called DCI MiSTiC EmBraCers. Inspired to help her team inch up the leaderboard as she prepared for her once-in-a-lifetime experience, Anand was dedicated, regularly hiking 5 to 8 miles on weekends in William B. Umstead State Park.

“I knew if my team knows about it, it will create extra motivation in my mind because I can't let my team down,” Anand said.

It was impossible to prepare for the lack of oxygen, however. By the time she reached Everest Base Camp, her oxygen level was 64%, though it quickly returned to normal levels of 95% or higher when a helicopter took her group to a site 3,000 feet closer to sea level.

A sweeping view of snow-capped mountains
Snow-capped mountains were a regular sight for Monika Anand on a trek to Everest Base Camp. Photo courtesy of Monika Anand

“There's a huge difference between here and there,” Anand said. “Whatever we heard about what it takes to do the EBC, it was very different in reality.” 

And nothing prepared her for the sights in Nepal when she arrived.

Monika Anand shared her story with Working@Duke after her Get Moving Challenge teammates encouraged her to do so. Click this or the star above and share your story idea with us.

“Every single day the terrain was different, more beautiful than the last one, lesser and lesser oxygen and colder,” Anand wrote in an email to her GMC team upon her return. “The tea houses where we would break for the night got scanty and had no electricity, heating or basic amenities. It was like surviving on a cold planet surrounded with ruggedly majestic mountains, so close that you could touch them. Hiking for 8 to 12 hours every day through valleys was surreal. There was some divine magic engulfing us all and kept us going.”

Anand and her husband both said the experience of the trek changed them.

“There comes a point in the trek when it’s just you and the mountains and you don’t think about anything else and it’s kind of spiritual,” Mukesh Anand said. “You find this peace with yourself once you come back.”

Added Monika Anand: “Touching that rock filled me with an inner peace that I have never felt before,” she said of reaching the craggy Everest Base Camp.

And now that she’s back in Durham and back at work, she holds onto that peace and the lessons she learned about mental strength, kindness and connecting with nature.

Send story ideas, shout-outs and photographs through our story idea form or write working@duke.edu.

Follow Working@Duke on X (Twitter), Facebook and Instagram and subscribe on YouTube.