Six people from Andhra Pradesh have done what only a resilient few manage to do. They have all scaled the Mount Everest irrespective their humble roots.
The six people consist of two senior intermediate students who are sons of daily-wage labourer and farm labourer. Vooyaka Krishna Rao and Kunja Durga Rao are students of the AP Tribal Welfare Residential Schools who belong to scheduled tribes. The two have been supported by the Social Welfare Department and Youth Services Department to achieve their dream.
Suresh Babu who also scaled the highest peak belongs to scheduled caste and is the son of small-time workers. Kare Satya Rao from Visakhapatnam also scaled the Everest and is from a family of fishermen. He was also sponsored by the Youth Services Department. S Nagaraju is another man from Visakhapatnam who’s also a marathoner. Tammineni Bharat from Kurnool on the other hand couldn’t scale the Everest on his first attempt in 2015 due to the Nepal earthquake, but achieved it this time.
The state government had previously picked out 65 students from the social welfare and tribal welfare residential schools and taught them the basics of mountaineering at the CBR Academy near Vijayawada. 34 of the 65 were handpicked and sent to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling for further training. Then later on, 14 of the 34 students were chosen for advanced mountaineering training in Ladakh where they trained for two weeks in temperatures that often ranged between zero and minus 40 degrees Celsius.
After all that, a batch of 13 were selected for the final expedition and six of them were a success at scaling the peak. Normally it takes 45 days to climb the Everest but these students reached the peak in just 30 days.
