Arunima Sinha, 26-Year-Old Amputee Who Lost Leg In Robbery, Scales Mount Everest

An Indian woman who lost her leg after battling robbers on a train two years ago became one of the first female amputees to scale Mount Everest.

Arunima Sinha, according to India Today, was a national level volleyball player. But in 2011, a group of robbers boarded her train and tried to snatch a chain from her. When she resisted, she was thrown off the moving train and doctors had to amputate her left leg below her knee.

She told NDTV that she made the decision to do something great while recovering in the hospital.

"At that time everyone was worried for me," she said. "I then realized I had to do something in my life so that people stop looking at me with pity. I read about people scaling the Mt. Everest. I spoke to my older brother and my coach who only encouraged me."

Sinha, 26, began her going on treks in Northern India and Nepal on April 1 as her final preparations before heading to the top of Everest. She reached the top Tuesday. According to the Wall Street Journal it took her 17 hours to scale the mountain after two months of preparing for the ascent.

“She was definitely slow because of her physical condition. But her mental strength and stamina was extraordinary,” Dawa Sherpa, the general manager at Asian Trekking, a Nepal-based company that organized her expedition, told the newspaper.

An American woman, Rhonda Graham, a left-leg amputee, is believed to be the first female amputee to have completed the feat when she did it in 2011.