Six Andhra Pradesh students 1st to scale Mount Everest this season

Vijayawada: Six students from Andhra Pradesh successfully scaled Mount Everest on Saturday. They reached the highest peak in the world by 9:30 in the morning along with their sherpas.

The Andhra Pradesh government had sent 19 students for the Everest expedition. Among the 19 students, six of them have reached the summit and the remaining three are also expected to complete the feat in a day or two.

Sandrana Nagaraju, 19, and K. Satya Rao, 20, (both from Visakhapatnam), Bharat Tammineni, 27, from Kurnool, Durga Rao Kunja, Gullamarusu Suresh Babu, Vooyaka Krishna Rao were the first team of the season to reach the Everest summit.

Nagaraju’s parents were daily wage labourers and he drew inspiration from Malavath Poorna, the youngest girl to climb Mount Everest.

Satya Rao came from a fisherman’s family and was pursuing his degree. Bharata from Kurnool attempted to scale Everest in 2015 but failed due to the earthquake. His team returned from advanced base camp after the earthquake hit Nepal.

Durga Rao, Suresh Babu and Krishna Rao also came from a poor background. They were students of tribal and social welfare colleges. The department of youth services has sponso-red six students and the Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Residential Edu-cational Institutions So-ciety (APSWREIS), Andhra Pradesh Tribal Wel-fare Educational Institu-tions Society (APTWRIES) have sponsored 13 students.

The students were selected for the Everest expedition after three levels of testing their capabilities from nearly 400 students.

Noted mountaineer and recipient of Tenzing Norgay Adventure Award, Bachinepally Sekhar Babu, guided the team to the Everest summit. He earlier guided Malavath Poorna and Sadhanapally Anand in a record-setting expedition.

For the first time, an Indian company has fixed the rope to the summit with the largest-ever Indian team with 23 climbers and sherpas.