During the coronavirus-related lockdown last year, Raha Moharrak was able to survive alone thanks to the mental strategies she learned while climbing Mount Everest. Saudi Moharrak, the youngest Arab woman to climb Mount Everest, made headlines a few years ago. She said that keeping a positive attitude required concentrating only on what she could control.
“One of the best mountain lessons I ever learned came in handy when I was stuck in quarantine. At some point, the only thing you can control and manage is yourself, your emotions and your thoughts: you cannot control the weather or coronavirus,” said the Dubai-based Moharrak.
“You can take precautions and be vigilant and on top of things but at some point, it’s out of your hands. I’ve learned to take a step back and to manage my emotions and my expectations because you can’t manage anything else,” she said.
Moharrak made a comment about the growing sense of hopelessness she had been observing around her as people continue to work from home and lockdowns have been reinstated in several countries: ” She continued, “It’s almost as if some people have given up and are only seeing a dark and gloomy picture in front of them.”
Moharrak stated: “While acknowledging that she also struggled with such feelings of despair at the peak of the lockdown in the UAE. I used to visit a new country every few weeks, but that stopped, and it could have broken me, but I did my best to remain optimistic.
“One of the main things that kept me going throughout this pandemic is dreaming and having aspirations: my travel list became longer and my contact list became stronger. If we can’t go outwards, we can go inwards,” she added.
Since becoming the first Saudi woman to scale Mount Everest, Mouharrak has worked hard. She became the first Saudi woman to climb the Seven Summits three years ago and had begun hosting her own travel show before the coronavirus struck, rendering travel impossible.
“People always assume that Everest is everything but I always look at Everest as just another pearl in a beautiful necklace of pearls. On its own it’s really cool but I would rather have it on a string of more adventurous things,” said Moharrak.
Being an Arab woman mountaineer, according to Moharrak, is like having a “double-edged sword; it sometimes helps you, sometimes hinders you, but, in my case, I’ve always taken it as an edge to use rather than something to be used against me.” Because the more people criticized me, the more I wanted to disprove them. This actually made me want to work harder and accomplish more.
