A message from the 3 Sisters

As you may know, the 2010 Annapurna 100 race had zero Nepali female participants and only three foreign women running. We decided to make a big effort to try and change that and to some degree it worked. This year there were 10 foreign female runners, including one of the worlds very best, Lizzy Hawker. From the Nepal side, we contacted a few well known organisations and two reacted, though in the end, only one group arrived at the start.

The 3 Sisters is a well known organisation that trains under-privileged women from all over Nepal to become female trekking guides. They have been enormously successful. Dicky Chhetri there persuaded and encouraged some of the girls to enter the 50 km race, and a dozen of them entered.

Dicky, Lucky and Nicky - The 3 Sisters © Dmitri Alexander 2009

We just got a great message in from Dicky Chhetri below:

Thank you for your email. I did not know whether you were in Pokhara on that day. Anyway I am also very proud of our girls. They did not do any practice for the marathon, though they did manage to participate in it. Normally in our trekking schedule it is a 3 or 4 days trek. I am inspired with their effort and courage too. It is our pleasure to see all those girls managing it. We also honored them for their participation.

I hope they will continue to participate again if there are any events in the future. I think they already got the good experience with this race and they will do more practice for next time. I need to talk more [with them] for their individual experiences, and then I could talk to you. Some of them were the good runners but they could not manage to do well, because they were injured. Although they have learned something for next time.

Yesterday we had a picnic party with all the employees from 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking, there were around 160 members including our family. We honored those runners there too.

Thank you very much for giving this opportunity to us and our girls.  We will remain grateful to you.

Hope to hear from you again.

With best regards,
Dicky

For all of you who didn’t enter thinking the race was too tough, take inspiration from these non-runners (though experienced trekkers) and join them again in the race next year! (However, please do follow a good training schedule!)

The 3 Sisters girls we also interviewed for Wave Magazine here.

ps. Thanks to photojournalist Dmitri Alexander for the picture (take a look now at his photography) – we’ll try to find pictures of those running ladies soon and add them here.