You may not know Cara Elizabeth Yar Khan just yet. But it's likely that you will. She's not letting anything stop her from living life to the fullest. Though she has a rare muscle disorder, Yar Khan still managed to travel across the Grand Canyon on horseback.
Now, her adventure is the subject of a new documentary called Facing the Falls. It follows Yar Khan's 12-day journey across the Grand Canyon in 2018. "You don't realize the limits of what human beings can do unless you're tested," Yar Khan said. She wanted to push the limits of what she was capable of and show others not to limit themselves.
"What I took out of the Grand Canyon [makes] me the person, the professional, and the woman that I am today," she said. "And for that I will be forever grateful."
Yar Khan suffers from a rare muscle disease that basically turned them into Swiss cheese. She first noticed symptoms while working in Panama at just 26 years old. Although healthy, she was shocked to notice she was developing a limp. After a muscle biopsy, a doctor told her that she had a mutation of the GNE gene. It was causing her muscles to disintegrate.
Adventure At Grand Canyon
They eventually diagnosed her with hereditary inclusion body myopathy, a very rare genetic disease. Within 10 to 15 years, it would incapacitate her. But Yar Khan hasn't let that stop her. She became obsessed with the idea of horseback riding the Grand Canyon. After four years of lessons, she was ready to go on her adventure.
It wasn't all kittens and rainbows. The adventurer faced freezing nights and uncomfortable sleeping conditions at the Grand Canyon. Yar Khan got kicked by a mule and experienced two black eyes. One member of the crew almost died after getting sucked under a motorboat. They faced some challenges along the way.
"It was challenge after challenge, roadblock after roadblock, barrier after barrier," Yar Khan tells PEOPLE. "But I always came back to the people who surrounded me, the people who believed in us ... it wasn't about me, it was about us."
"We were doing this for everyone because when you go on this type of journey, this kind of pilgrimage, it never is about the one person," she said.
"It's so important just to be yourself and to find a way to be comfortable with who you are, what you bring to the world as you are," Yar Khan continued. "Not needing to prove to anyone something that you're not, finding confidence in the things that you can do rather than what you can't do."
