Stroke survivor Jayshree Vijay Mohan sets two Guinness World Records on Kilimanjaro

Chennai: When Jayshree Vijay Mohan’s daughter left a note saying, “Amma, I’m crossing my fingers that you reach the top and come back safely,” she did not know her mother was about to create history.

The Chennai-based entrepreneur, mother of two and stroke survivor has set two Guinness World Records on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak.

Jayshree completed the ascent in five days, six hours and 50 minutes, and the descent in 10 hours and 26 minutes in September 2025. Both records were recognised under the CIH (Coordination Impairment-Hemiplegia) female category for the fastest ascent and fastest descent.

The summit was four years in the making. In October 2021, Jayshree suffered a stroke during a road trip from Trichy to Chennai that left the left side of her body paralysed.”Everything for me changed in just one road trip. It was like there was a version before and a version after,” she recalls.

Recovery meant relearning basic movements. Her physiotherapist Dr Naresh S said, “We were dealing with something much more basic: getting her body and brain to trust each other again.”Through months of therapy, fatigue and falls, two Tamil words kept her going — ‘Avolo daan’ (that’s it). “Whatever has happened has happened. I cannot reset it. I cannot redo it,” she said.

Despite a lifelong fear of heights, she took to mountaineering, combining her strength with her fear. Her first major trek was to Everest Base Camp, just 18 months after the stroke.

Training for Kilimanjaro took nearly four hours daily, with a focus on endurance, stairs, inclines and balance. Weeks before the climb, she injured her shin in a fall but refused to postpone the attempt planned for Stroke Awareness Month.

Her mother Uma Vijaymohan said, “As a mother, there is nothing more painful than seeing your child suffer. One day she was managing career, home and children effortlessly, and the next she was struggling with things we all take for granted.”Her daughters, aged 7 and 10, became her biggest cheerleaders, leaving notes like ‘Amma, you can do this’.

Jayshree said she chose Kilimanjaro because it stands alone. “It is a freestanding mountain. It is also a dormant volcano with so much power inside it. I could relate to that.”She had also requested in her Guinness application that her record be broken soon. “The day another stroke survivor breaks my record will be my real summit moment,” she said.”In life, all of us have our own mountains. If I could climb mine, I believe everyone can climb theirs too,” she added.