As a youth she criticized traditional societal beliefs including standards of dress for women.

[2] She was born in Joniyawas village in Rewari district of Haryana state, India as the sixth child in a family of five boys.

Have a mind of studying a little bit more she attended Maharani College in Jaipur, where she was able to see mountaineers climbing Aravalli Range from her room.

She was inspired by this to join Uttarkashi's Nehru Institute of Mountaineering while successfully continuing her studies for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) exams in a hostel provided by the Amity University at Noida.

In 1992, Yadav scaled Mount Everest, when she was barely 20, becoming the youngest woman in the world to achieve this feat, a record which was broken by 13-year-old Purna, in 2014.