The following is an adapted version of an article written by Emese Hulej, originally published in Hungarian in Magyar Krónika.

From Mexico to the French Riviera, from Thailand to the Arctic Circle, she has travelled to many places around the world, hiking, diving, studying, practicing karate, climbing snowy peaks with crampons, and even disarming scorpions.

A little girl who learned to love nature and freedom from her parents cares little about those who think that a young doctor and mother of two children should stay at home and look up recipes for baby food instead of seeking challenges.

Instead, this young doctor recently went on an expedition to the Arctic Circle by dog sledge, the Fjällräven Polar, whose international team of 20 was selected from 30,000 applicants. Five days, 300 kilometres, 180 sledge dogs, but the essence cannot be expressed in numbers. It is difficult to put into words what it is like to cling to a dog sledge from morning to night, where there is no human presence, no cell phone reception, only nature: endless snowfields, 50 shades of white, the polar lights, and polar flora and fauna. Everything is cold, beautiful, and real. In this environment, after a day-long journey, you have to sleep in a tent or without a tent, build a snow wall, light a fire, cook soup, feed the dogs, and form a team.

‘I consider this experience to be the fruit of my last five years. I’ve been writing my blog (Vanilia Travels) for five years, and I started organizing the Sherpa Mama Project two years ago,’ Eszter Scheili begins her story.

‘Mothers with small children, families who go out into nature together. I saw Polar’s call for applications by chance and found out that the number of applicants is staggering every year. After all, if you are selected, you can do a programme worth tens of thousands of euros for free. Okay, at least I’ll try, I thought, and I made three one-minute videos, which were required for the application. I like challenges anyway; I set them for myself every year. For example, I run as many kilometres as in the current year, or I complete a 75-day challenge that requires two workouts a day. It’s not easy with two children. But I didn’t plan to leave my five-year-old and one-and-a-half-year-old children to go to the North Pole. Still, I went for it. While I was away, my husband took care of things at home. That’s how our relationship and family work.’

‘It is obvious that a mother who lives a full life gives the most to her family’

She met her husband, Pavo, in Thailand, deep in the jungle. They met there at one of the hotels where Eszter had wandered into during a two-month trip the summer after graduating. A year passed before Pavo decided to visit Budapest, and there, the blonde girl he could not forget.

‘A friend of mine sent me a message to show a Croatian guy the Heroes’ Square. I had been working as a tour guide all my life as a university student, but I didn’t really want to show an unknown guy the city in social work. For some reason, I agreed…When he showed up, I realized that this was that handsome guy from the jungle…That’s how it started. Later, there, in Heroes’ Square, he asked me to marry him.’

Their older son starts school in the autumn; the little one is two years old. Eszter recently uploaded a new video about the joys she finds in life, in which, in addition to the ‘time spent with them’ section, there is also a ‘time without them’ section. Unfortunately, too many people still consider it sacrilege for a mother to seek joy not only with her children, even though it is obvious that a mother who lives a full life gives the most to her family.

‘I feel it is my mission to make this approach accepted by as many people as possible. Motherhood is an important and wonderful part of our personality, but we are not just mothers. When we have a child, we naturally put their needs and the needs of the family before our own, but it is important to be able to do things that we only do for ourselves sometimes. During Polar, I got to know the best version of myself. I experienced that I bear the consequences of what I do, good or bad, and it was such an intense, liberating experience that I want to carry over into everyday life. My husband also knows that I give my best to the family when I sometimes recharge without them, so he supports me in this. It is important for me to experience from time to time: now I am alone, and I am responsible only for myself.’

All this is said by a young woman who was a top athlete, did karate, competed and studied abroad, worked throughout her student years, and made independent decisions very early on. She was 13 when her father died, and her mother was left alone with three daughters, so she rearranged her life to support and raise them. Her daughters have become independent and successful. Eszter, for example, is preparing for her final exam as a gastroenterologist, and her strength still seems inexhaustible. Her plane arrived in Budapest at dawn from the Polar expedition, and that same morning, she already appeared on a TV quiz show, the recording of Twelve Smart People.

‘This wasn’t how I planned it when I applied for the competition. I tried to cancel, but I couldn’t. So on the way home, I was already trying to memorize the county seats and the muses of Hungarian poets and writers.’

As it turned out, it was unnecessary, because instead the questions were about Tutankhamun, the prophet Jonah, and Harry Potter. ‘I’ve never met such a smart woman,’ the host told Eszter, who, in addition to the compliment, took home a nice cash prize as well. Compensation for the family for the days spent away.

In addition to the many exotic or extreme destinations and challenges, she has a project that even the less sporty and determined could relate to. This is the Sherpa Mama community.

‘It feels good to lead [our children] to a lifestyle that gives them lifelong experiences’

‘During Covid, my husband worked abroad a lot, and I wanted to break out of the home-playground-drugstore triangle. Milán was little at the time, and I started hiking with him, carrying him in a carrier on my back. Then I thought it might be good for others, too. I announced it on social media. I remember, first we went to the Paprikás Stream valley near Solymár, only 15 of us at first. Within a few weeks, there were a hundred of us. Performance is not the point here; we are out in the forest, in the field, we take a deep breath, we recharge. We stop to breastfeed, change diapers, and have a picnic. Of course, many people complain about this too; they think it is torture for the children, but it is not. They play, sleep a lot, are in good air, and they don’t cry any more than they do at home between four walls. It feels good to lead them to a lifestyle that gives them lifelong experiences.’

It wouldn’t be Eszter if she didn’t raise the bar higher and higher. She came up with the idea of ​​wild camping for Sherpa moms—and of course dads, children, and even dogs and cats—on the banks of the Danube in Göd. There was bathing, pitching tents, cooking together, baking bacon and marshmallows, and reading stories in a tent with a headlamp. They even projected a children’s movie on a stretched screen. Given the success, they wild camped all summer, sometimes by the water, sometimes among the mountains. Who wouldn’t want such an experience and such a community?

The Sherpa moms swap clothes with each other, have already held charity collections, and organized a forest kindergarten where the children created things from leaves and other natural materials, and competed to see who could recognize the most animal tracks. Everyone presumes how much time and organization all this takes, right? In exchange, a tight-knit community has emerged that organizes programmes, goes out to dinner or to the movies, even without children.

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