Tall and willowy, twins Tashi and Nungshi Malik look like a stiff Southland southerly wind would blow them off their feet. Allison Beckham finds looks can be deceiving.
Tashi and Nungshi Malik have physical strength and nerves of steel that have seen them best Mt Everest's ''dead zone'' and unstable Arctic ice floes.
They are also really nice.
Flashing brilliant smiles on a sunny Invercargill day, they enthuse about everything - their father who encouraged them to begin mountain climbing and invested his entire life savings of about $NZ95,000 when they could not find a sponsor for their Everest expedition, their determination to be role models for girls, and the ''wonderful opportunity'' they have to study in New Zealand.
They talk nineteen to the dozen in impeccable English, finishing each other's sentences and occasionally breaking into Nepali to argue a point.
(Their maternal grandparents are Nepalese).
The competitive pair rarely agree on anything except mountaineering, Nungshi says.
''We're like both sides of the same magnet, but one north and one south.''
• Raised under the shadow of the Himalayas, their father Virender was a high-ranking army commander until taking early retirement to become their ''unpaid manager''. Their mother Anju is a school teacher.
Although very athletic at school, they had never thought about mountaineering.
Tashi: ''We had just graduated high school when Dad told us he had enrolled us in a basic mountaineering course. I said `Dad, are we seriously going there?'. ''
Nungshi: ''But we decided to go and check it out, and after our first climb the mountains charmed us.''
Tashi said they were surprised and thrilled to discover how much they both enjoyed climbing - and keeping up with the men in their classes.
''We discovered we had the right stamina to keep going. We broke the female stereotype,'' she said.
They completed bachelors' degrees in journalism and mass communication before taking two years off in 2013 to concentrate on their goal of completing the seven summits challenge - climbing the highest peaks on each of the world's seven continents.
While their father was supportive of them climbing Mt Everest, their mother was not, the women said.
Tashi: ''Mum was very anti.''
Nungshi: ''She said it was a suicide mission.''
However, when they finally confirmed the expedition she took out a small loan so she could personally contribute to their expenses.
• During their climb, one of their sherpas died when he fell down a steep face, and Nungshi almost died, too.
During the final push to the summit, in the ''dead zone'' above 8000m where more than 250 climbers who have lost their lives still lie, she began to feel ill.
It was not until later she found her oxygen regulator was faulty and she was running out of air.
Nungshi: ''I was at this place called Balcony close to the summit when my pulse dropped, I could not see anything around me and I stopped. I remember every time I took one step I was taking about 15 seconds to regain a breath. Really, I felt like a fish out of water.
''The worst thing was my sister was way ahead of me and I didn't even know where she was or what I could possibly do. But Tashi realised something was wrong and came back. She said she thought I wasn't getting enough oxygen and I checked, and there you go - she was right.''
Tashi: ''She tells me `I can't breathe and I think I should just turn back'. My heart just went boom, and I thought `that's just not happening'.''
Nungshi: ''The sherpa was telling me to go back. I didn't want to go back but I thought I should.''
Tashi: ''But then I stopped her. I said `we're here together, we wanted to do this together, so how can you give up so soon'?''
Nungshi: ''Her trump card was to remind me that Mum's loan was in the bank. And honestly, that triggered me to go on.''
Which she did, using a borrowed regulator.
As scary as that experience was, the twins said one day during their expedition to the North Pole last month was worse.
''Beaten black and blue by nasty winds'' and exhausted from towing sleds twice their own weight, their party of five encountered ever-widening leads - water-filled gaps in the ice - and soft and unstable ice.
They resorted to desperate measures - heading off separately in different directions as quickly as possible to lighten the load on the ice and to try to find a safe way forward.
They said they thought they might die that day. Instead, it was the day they reached the pole.
• The twins, who now have some sponsors, have more adventures planned including climbing Aoraki Mt Cook later this year.
They are also planning to write books for children and adults and hope for a movie deal.
Without a trace of irony they say the movie will have to be ''world class and made in Hollywood''.
But they said their main focus lay in being role models for Indian girls, so unwanted in a society which valued boys that an estimated 500,000 newborns annually were killed by their parents or left outdoors to die.
One of the most tragic stories they heard was of a news team which filmed a dog ''munching on something'', only to discover the something was a baby girl.
In the Northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, where their parents now live, there were an estimated 895 females to every 1000 males, but they said female feticide occurred in many parts of India.
Nungshi: ''Change is happening in ripples but there is not a strong current of change. The big cities are far advanced ... but you only have to one hour from [the capital] New Delhi and it is like going back 100 years. Women are covered with veils because of societal pressure, and girls are seen as a liability.''
Their long-term goal is to establish a world-class mountaineering institute in northern India for climbers of both genders, and to train women for meaningful work as guides or in the mountaineering camps or local schools.
Tashi: ''Being girls we feel for girls. When we reached the top of the world [Everest] ... we thought `why don't we take this positive message around the world - that girls can do anything they want?'. It's about giving them that enabling environment to allow them to sustain themselves and dream big.''
Tashi and Nunghsi Malik
• From Haryana state, northern India.
• Recipients of New Zealand India Sports Scholarships, studying for graduate diplomas in sport and exercise at the Southern Institute of Technology, Invercargill.
• After successfully reaching the North Pole last month, became the youngest women and the first twins in the world to complete the Adventurers' Grand Slam: conquering the highest peak on each of the world's seven continents and reaching the South and North Poles.
• Climbed Mt Everest in May, 2013 (the first twin sisters to do so).
• Ambassadors for the Girl Child Prosperity Scheme in India launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January.
