At more than 8,000 ft above sea level, Mt. Everest remains a compelling challenge to mountaineers who simply cannot resist its pull. On April 8, S. Prabhakaran, who had decided to pit himself against the peak, left for Kathmandu. On May 20 — dawn had barely broken — he became the first Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer to have completed the arduous journey to the top of the world.
A 2011-batch officer from Karnataka cadre, Mr. Prabhakaran is a native of Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu.
He was one of the six from India who undertook the journey. The team’s feat came during the same time when some climbers were believed to have perished in their quest to scale the highest peak in the world, news the Indian team got via the radio.
2015 expedition
Chatting with The Hindu via WhatsApp from the north-route base camp situated at a dizzying height of 5,400-m, the 29-year-old Divisional Forest Officer from Koppal spoke about how this was his second attempt at scaling the Everest. “In 2015, an All India Services Expedition to Mt. Everest was formed with five members and Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off our journey on March 27. Due to the earthquake which hit Nepal, the team had to come back from 6,000 m,” he said on Tuesday.
Unfazed, Mr. Prabhakaran decided to try again. The team, organised and funded by a Hyderabad-based adventure company, had Suhail Sharma, a 2012-batch IPS officer from Maharashtra; Radhika, Dy.SP from Telangana; Badhraiah who is from a tribal community from East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, and Balan Sivaraman Krishnan from Mumbai, an engineer working in the UAE.
Another member of the team, Ashok Munne from Maharashtra, who had lost his leg in a train accident in 2008, could not reach the summit as his prosthetic leg started developing problems because of the cold, Mr. Prabhakaran said, and added that he decided to quit a little above Camp-3.
“The last day’s climb from Camp-3 to the summit was dangerous. It was steep. Any small mistake would have directly brought us deep straight down. It was very scary,” he said.
‘A perfect night’
They took the north route and scaled the summit on May 20 at 6.45 a.m. (IST). The team started around 10 p.m. on May 19 from Camp-3 (8,300 m) for the summit. It was a perfect night for approaching the summit as the wind was less and the conditions were perfect,” he said.
Climbing enthusiast
The forestry graduate from the Forest College Research Institute, Mettupalayam, Tamil Nadu, was always a climbing enthusiast, trekking being his hobby since his college days.
“I was the secretary of the trekking and hiking club during my college days. That is where the idea of mountaineering started. I decided to climb the Everest in 2014 after starting work in Karnataka. I went for a basic mountaineering course in Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling. As a part of the pre-Everest training, we got special training by the institute in the Kanchenjunga area of north Sikkim,” he said. “This is the most adventurous experience I have ever had,” he said.
