Women Can Achieve Anything They Set Their Minds On Ft. Nelly Attar

This one is special. I sit down with Nelly Attar, fresh off the mountain, so soon after summiting K2 that her bag is still stuck in Skardu. She is the first Arab woman to stand on that peak, and she walked into our conversation with the kind of tired that seeps into your bones. But she still showed up, and she still shared her heart.

When I ask her where she was born and raised, it’s clear her story does not follow a straight line. Born in Riyadh to Lebanese parents, she studied psychology after a brief detour through economics, worked as a psychologist in a hospital, started teaching dance fitness on the side, and then one day realised: “My job is taking time away from sports.” That moment cracked everything open. She opened a dance studio called Move, and not long after, she left her full-time job to chase a life built around movement.

Here, we explore the climb, the pivots, and the faith that carried her.

From vet dreams to dance floors

Nelly laughs about her earliest career wish. “I wanted to be a vet,” she says, “and then my parents were not so supportive of the idea.” So she tried economics, then psychology. She loved it, got her master’s, worked in a hospital. But even then, she was drawn to dance. She got certified as a dance fitness instructor, teaching classes at the hospital because women’s gyms were scarce. “Sports was not very accessible for a woman,” she remembers. The classes took off. Women craved that outlet. “It was a fun outlet for them,” she says, “a way for them to move with friends.” Soon she saw she was impacting people more through movement than through pure psychology. She followed that thread.

Finding community where doors weren’t open

In a time when women in Saudi Arabia could not drive and training outdoors wasn’t common, Nelly had to build her own world. She found a running community. She didn’t even like running at first, but that group taught her endurance, and later she finished five marathons around the world. She started hiking every weekend in university while friends complained, “Nelly, sleep in.” But she kept walking. When you surround yourself with people who push you, she says, you find your way. Even when the road is rocky, there’s a small community that will help you lace up your shoes.

K2 is a different ball game

After Everest in 2019, people asked what’s next. Nelly wanted something that would change her training entirely. K2, she says, is “one of the most challenging and dangerous mountains in the world.” Her guide initially said she wasn’t ready: “You would need another two three years of training.” That was three years ago. So she committed. Training was brutal: some weeks 30 hours. Her coach completely reworked her program. And the climb itself? No comparison. Everest was more commercialised, more comfortable. On K2, she says, the statistics were harrowing: “One out of four would pass away while climbing K2.” The terrain is relentlessly steep, the fixed lines unreliable, and there’s no helicopter rescue. “You’re constantly scared,” she admits. “If anything happens up there, there’s no chopper that’s going to take me.”

Climbing through the hardest moments

The summit push brought physical and mental extremes. She got a stomach bug that lasted through the first rotation. Then a cold. Then her period, which she doesn’t normally get on climbs. “I was in so much pain, I had so many cramps,” she tells me. On the way to Camp 2, she wanted to turn back. Her guides said there was no tomorrow, the weather wouldn’t wait. She dragged her feet and then, somehow, entered a flow state. She uses the Arabic phrase of praise, subhanAllah, and then recalls, “I just somehow went into a state of flow, nothing else mattered.” It became one of her best days.

But the real test came near the summit at an ice wall. “I got a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe. I felt my heart rate was so fast.” She’d never climbed on ice like that. She unclipped her bag, filtered out the noise, and kept moving. She didn’t want to give up, but she hoped the ice would end soon. That’s K2: you don’t know if you can, until you do.

Faith, family, and the mind’s strength

Throughout the climb, Nelly held onto faith. “We are in the hands of God,” she says. “Every time I would be super scared, I’d just think of Allah and I’d feel, okay I’m fine. Just trust.” That mental shift from terror to calm, she describes it as coming from the mind. “Strength can just come from your mind, from faith.” She also carried her family with her. Her dad, who taught her to inspect insects and vegetation on childhood hikes, passed away, and the climb became a tribute. Her mother gave her blessing, maybe not fully grasping the danger. Her sisters helped manage her Instagram and stayed in touch via satellite. They climbed with her, in spirit.

Every degree still counts

I love that Nelly never sees her psychology background as a detour. Her study of mental health now helps her connect with teammates, tap into mental resources during climbs, and understand herself when she’s alone in her own head. “I spent a lot of time in my own head,” she says. “I have to think of what will help me on the climb, what are the strategies.” She’s proof that no learning is wasted. She even once applied for a master’s in biological imaging and photography, then realised she didn’t want to sit in an office editing photos all day. That self-awareness is a thread running through her entire life.

Small steps toward the next peak

As we wind down, Nelly is already thinking about climbing again in August. But she also wants family, a house, a car, a little stability after months of moving. “I still feel like I’m at the start of my life,” she says. And at 32, she is. Her story isn’t about reaching one summit and stopping. It’s about using each step to fuel the next. She reminds us that changing paths is not a sign of not knowing what you want; it’s a sign of listening to yourself.

This conversation matters because so many of us in Desi communities grow up hearing that a woman should stick to one stable path, that sports or big adventures are not for us, that our degrees must dictate our lives. Nelly, with her tired eyes and calm certainty, shows otherwise. She didn’t let the fear of “log kya kahenge”, what will people say, stop her. She walked, danced, climbed, and prayed her way to K2. And she came back to tell us: women can achieve anything they set their minds on.