Expeditions plan for altitude, weather and equipment failure. Almost nobody plans for this. Maharashtra mountaineer Yogeshwari Bohare was at 16,000 feet when her period started, with four to five days still to go at that spot, no sanitary pads available and not a single other woman in the group to borrow from.
Her solution was pure mountain improvisation, and she filmed the whole thing for her Instagram, @yogi_on_everest.
"I got my period last night, there is no woman here, and I'm the only one. And we still have 4-5 days here. So I'm trying to make a sanitary pad from tissue paper, and doctor tape. I have layered the tissue paper so it is nice and thick," she says in the clip.
Layer by layer, she stacks the tissue, folds it into shape and tapes the edges down with medical tape. Finished, she holds the result up to the camera with the only review that matters at that altitude: "Let's see if this works."
Bohare wrote that she had no real choice but to improvise, and used the video to make a larger point. "Mountains teach you more than climbing; they teach you how to adapt, survive, and find solutions when things get tough," she wrote, noting that periods do not pause for expeditions and that what women deal with in the mountains is rarely talked about.
Viewers responded with a mix of practical advice and admiration. A menstrual cup for future trips was one suggestion; adding period supplies to the standard adventure checklist was another. A third comment summed up the mood: "We bleed, we climb, we survive. That's the strength of a woman."
