Hyderabad: A 20-year-old tribal youth from Mahabubabad district became the youngest mountaineer to summit 6,488-metre tall Gorichen Peak in Arunachal Pradesh.
Bhukya Yashwanth, a second year degree student, was among the eight-member civilian group which undertook the expedition of Gorichen on Sept 19. “The going was not easy. It was tough. I felt great when I summitted the mountain and waved the Indian flag from there,” Yashwanth told TOI.
After the exhilarating experience, he said two mountaineers, who could not proceed further, had to be assisted to bring them down. The team members had to literally carry one of the expedition members, who was completely exhausted.
He said there were mountaineers from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Arunachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. However, from the civil group, only six were able to reach the top of the peak, braving all odds, he claimed. An Indian Army expedition was the only other team that had summited the mountain in 2016. A civilian team took up an expedition but could not scale the peak. Yashwanth, who displayed posters like ‘say no to drugs, say yes to life’ and ‘respect women, reject violence’ from atop the peak, has now set his eyes on scaling the 8,849-metre Mount Everest.
Governors of Jharkhand, Haryana and Chhattisgarh — Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Bandaru Dattatreya and Ramen Deka — lent financial support to his mission. Telangana CM A Revanth Reddy has also sanctioned financial assistance. “There is nothing else that I can think of doing except mountaineering,” Yashwanth said.
