Mount Kilimanjaro is an ice-capped behemoth, standing on the Earth’s equatorial waistline. Legend has it that news of its first sighting by German missionaries in the 1840s was scoffed at — it seemed implausible that a glacier-topped mountain could rise from the torrid plains.
Since the first ascent of the world’s highest free-standing mountain 40 years later, thousands of climbers have made the bone-rattling ride to Moshi in Tanzania, the base camp for those wanting to conquer it. Among them in August this year were 43-year-old R Thirulogachandran and his 11-year-old daughter T Charumathi from Chennai. While many Indians have summitted Africa’s highest peak before, Charumathi is the first girl below 12 years from India to do so.
When we speak, Thirulogachandran and Charumathi have just returned from the hillocks near Manimangalam, in the suburbs of the city, where they practise rock climbing every morning. “It was my years in the National Cadet Corps that stoked my passion for mountaineering,” says Thirulogachandran, Assistant Manager, Finance, Blue Dart Aviation. Through his years as a student of Commerce at SIVET College, Thirulogachandran kept scaling mountains. Crampons, ice picks and a frost-flecked face have been constant companions these past 23 years, as he completed snow skiing and basic mountaineering courses in Manali, and advanced and instructor courses from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling. It equipped him to climb some of the highest peaks in the Himalayas, across Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, West Bengal and Nepal. He placed second in the Foreigners Category of the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon in 2004, a distance of 42 kilometres from Everest Base Camp to Namche Bazaar in a little over eight hours.
He passed on this love for scaling heights and spending days in balaclavas and insulated jackets to his elder daughter Charumathi, a Class VII student of Shri Natesan Vidyasala Matriculation Higher Secondary School. “I started training Charumathi at the age of three-and-a-half, and she adapted to short jungle treks and bouldering easily. I’ve raised her on a regimen of yoga, climbing with heavy gear, eggs, dry fruits and regular South Indian food,” says Thirulogachandran, adding that Charumathi has trekked up to Mount Rudageira in Uttarakhand and in the Nilgiris.
CHENNAI, 06/09/2017: For Metro Plus: Mountaineer R. Thirulogachandran with his daughter Charumathi at Manimangalam on Wednesday. Photo: R. Ragu CHENNAI, 06/09/2017: For Metro Plus: Mountaineer R. Thirulogachandran with his daughter Charumathi at Manimangalam on Wednesday. Photo: R. Ragu -
The Kilimanjaro expedition, organised by Transcend Adventures, a Hyderabad-based trekking agency, saw the father-daughter duo first sight Kilimanjaro’s volcanic peaks — Mawenzi’s serrated edges framed against a crystal-clear sky, Kibo’s snow-ringed precipice with Uhuru the highest peak, and Shira an extinct volcano — last month. It took hours of stumbling through walls of scree, desolate moorlands and plains of windswept lava over four days, with muscles twanging to the beat of pain, to reach Kibo Hut at 4,720 metres. After a day of acclimatisation and health checks, the final push was attempted close to midnight. “It was dark and the winds were high, and after hours of zig-zagging through scree, we reached Gillman’s Point at 5,685 metres. Charumathi developed altitude sickness and her oxygen levels dropped. It was another three-four hours to the summit. I made the difficult decision to send her back to Horrombo camp. I continued and summitted Uhuru (5,895 metres; 19,341 feet). It was only when I unfurled our Tricolour and my company flag that I stopped to realise what we had achieved,” says Thirulogachandran, adding that according to the Kilimanjaro records, Charumathi’s climb up to Gillman makes her the third youngest girl climber in the world and the first from India under-12 to climb this peak.
Since 2007, Thirulogachandran has run the Well-Wishers Adventure Club, training school students and corporates in a host of outdoor activities, such as river crossing, parasailing, silambam and archery (younger daughter T Harshini is a State-level archer). With the intention of climbing the highest peaks on all seven continents, Thirulogachandran has his sights set next on Australia’s Mount Kosciuszko. “It’s a run-up to Mount Everest,” he says, adding that although Blue Dart and Shri Natesan Vidyasala have been extremely generous with funds and time, he has often had to dig deep into his pockets. “I’m hoping for sponsorship to summit these mountains.”
But, for who or why, I ask. He pauses and then says with candour, “To celebrate the special bond that fathers and daughters share and for the dreams of the girl child everywhere.”
