The world lost a hero last month in Malli Mastan Babu. The champion cragsman was found dead in the Andes in South America while attempting to scale yet another peak.
He commanded a following. The message on a Facebook page created by his fans and well-wishers said: “Mountains retained its favourite child.”
Mastan Babu was only 40, but he leaves behind a legacy of achievements that should inspire generations. Next to his body, a copy of the Bhagvad Gita, a prayer bead and India’s flag were recovered at a height of 6,000-plus feet in the Cerro mountain range.
In a country where cricket is followed like a religion and its popular practitioners are deified, it is possible that many people may not have heard of Mastan Babu. He was a champion mountaineer, one who always aimed to go beyond excellence. His skills, stamina and self-confidence were amazing.
In 2006, Mastan Babu accomplished a tour de force. He became the quickest mountaineer ever to scale the tallest summits on each of the seven continents in 172 days – between January 19 and July 10. He climbed Aconcagua (South America, 6,962m), Denali (North America, 6,194m), Elbrus (Europe, 5,642m), Kilimanjaro (Africa, 5,895m), Kosciuszko (Australia, 2,228m), Everest (Asia, 8,850m) and Vinson Massif (Antarctica, 4,897m). In addition, he also scaled Carstensz, at 4,884m above the sea level, in Australia/Oceania.
Mastan Babu is the only South Asian to scale Antarctica’s highest mountain, Vinson Massif.
In June and July 2007, he traversed Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath in the Himalayas. In 2008 he trekked, all by himself, nearly 1,200 km in the world’s highest terrain from Everest to Kanchenjunga, in less than three months. En route, he ascended the five tallest peaks except K2 – Everest (8,850m), Kanchenjunga (8,586m), Lhotse (8,516m), Makalu (8,475m) and Cho Oyu (8,201m).
Mastan Babu was born in a poor family in the tribal Gandhi Jana Sangam village near Nellore in Andhra Pradesh. He studied in an army school in Korukonda and was an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, where he founded the Adventure Club in 2003. He started organising rock-climbing, skiing and trekking in the Himalayas.
He could have chosen a lucrative career as an engineer or management consultant. But inspired as he was by a statue of Lt. M. Uday Bhaskar Rao, a former student of the army school who, along with five other soldiers, had died in what is known as the Death Zone at an altitude above 26,000 feet on the flanks of Everest in 1985, he charted out his life.
Preferring solo expeditions because he was simply too fast for other mountaineers, he had climbed Aconcagua by early 2005. At 6,962m, it is the tallest mountain outside the Himalayas and the highest point in the Southern Hemisphere. (He subsequently scaled Aconcagua two more times.) He unfurled the Indian flag on Huascaran (6,768m) in Peru, Sajama (6,542m) in Bolivia, Chimborazo (6,310m) in Ecuador and Ojos del Salado (6,800m) in Chile.
Mastan Babu was a star. And he was a true son of India. He brought laurels to the country by daring to climb the most perilous of peaks. It is a pity his death went almost unnoticed amid the hysteria of the cricket World Cup in the Antipodes.
