Summiting Excellence!

In an exclusive chat with Citadel, SAURAJ JHINGAN and SAMIR PATHAM, trekking enthusiasts from the city, share their profound love for mountaineering and trekking. Challenging their mind and body, the duo decided to relive the arduous journey of climbing the highest peak in the world.

- Nishad Shinde

Hear this! Partners at their high altitude expedition organising, company Adventure Pulse, Sauraj Jhingan and Samir Patham, professional mountaineers from Pune, were summiting the Mt. Everest while an earthquake triggered avalanche scattered their tents, leaving them bewildered and startled. 

Recalling the horrifying reminiscences of 2015 earthquake that battered Nepal into pieces, Sauraj narrates, “As the ground shook beneath us, we ran out of our tents. The earthquake was so massive that we had difficulty in maintaining our body balance. We started feeling nauseated and giddy, owing to the violent tremors.”

Continuing on, he says, “At first, we thought the glacier was shifting, but immediately realized that it was just too big to be a glacier. Though the biggest fear in an earthquake usually is the building falling on you, in our case, we were surrounded by massive peaks covered with snow and ice, and the threat of a potential avalanche was looming continuously.”

Having survived the act of god, we ask Samir, Sauraj’s business partner, how did they manage to beat the wrath of nature? “We just happened to be extremely fortunate by virtue of our location of the campsite. We had established our Base Camp closer to the Khumbu Icefall, further up the glacier, and closer to the Western Shoulder of the Mt. Everest. When the avalanche struck, it came off the mountain directly opposite the Mt. Everest and hit the glacier and the Base Camp. We were one of the last camps to get hit, and thus escaped with no fatalities,” recalls Samir.