For the 15-year-old Hyderabad mountaineer Jaahnavi Sriperambuduru, a different kind of challenge awaits as she gears up to guide an eight-member team to Stok Kangri (6,153 mt) in Leh, the India’s highest trekkable peak.
Last year, Jaahanvi was the guide for the first time when she took a 10-year-old girl, Rea, and her mother, Sonali, to the Mount Everest base camp.
This time around, she is guiding a team that includes trekkers’ team leader Suresh Reddy (44), Nikhil Anand (32), Harsha Venkat (31), Jabiulla (44), Uday Kiran (27), Manohar Madasu (26) and the senior-most being 52-year-old C.V.M. Raja Ram of NFC.
Training programme
With Jaahnavi’s mentor-cum-coach S. Krishna Rao taking care of the training programme at his Hill Training Centre, this team hopes to set a benchmark in mountaineering.
Thankfully, JanJay Adventures would provide complete technical support and the logistics for this expedition as they have done in the past when Jaahnavi herself was involved in all those adventure trips.
One of the targets for the team would be to hoist the tri-colour on the coming Independence Day. This was exactly what Jaahnavi had done three years ago as part of her expedition of Mission7Summit.
“This will be a new experience for me. I am learning what makes a guide by being with this team for the last two months. I will ensure that they are fit to attempt this trek,” she said.
It may be recalled that Jaahnavi was on her Mission7Summit, climbing all the highest peaks of seven continents by reaching the farthest point of the globe — the North Pole and the South Pole — to make India proud. And till date, she has covered four continents scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mt. Elbrus (Europe), Mt. Kosciuszko (Australia) and Mt. Denali (North America).
New stars
“The whole objective now is to produce new stars in this adventure sport having ensured that the very mention of Hyderabad makes critics reveal the names of the best young mountaineers from the city,” said Jaahnavi, who herself was given a special, physical conditioning course by the SAI athletics coach Nagapuri Ramesh.
“We just hope to achieve our goals in what is going to be a demanding adventurous trip,” Jaahanavi signed off.
