Born To Climb

For Arjun Vajpai, mountains are a spiritual retreat. He’s just back from scaling Mount Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world.

- Nivedita Jayaram Pawar

Arjun Vajpai holds the rare distinction of being the youngest in the world to have scaled six of the fourteen 8,000-plus peaks in the world. Next up is K2, the world’s most dangerous mountain.

Many of us dream of spending some time in the mountains, watching the snowfall and climbing the rough peaks. We are happy when, in the breaks of our mundane lives, we get an opportunity to escape to the cosy hill station, or go mountaineering. But for 24-year-old Arjun Vajpai, climbing Mount Everest was a dream he’d nursed ever since he went with his granddad to Hanuman Tekdi in Pune at the age of 10. The setting sun bathed the mountain in a soft orange glow. The view was breathtaking. That was to be the start of a life-changing love affair with mountains.

Six years later, in 2010, Vajpai became the third-youngest Indian to climb Mount Everest. This feat is as unusual as it is impressive. But he didn’t stop at that. The very next year, he was the youngest climber to summit Mount Manaslu. Vajpai is also the youngest Indian mountaineer to scale Mount Cho Oyu, the world’s fifth-highest mountain, at about 8,188 metres, in between Tibet and mainland China.

Vajpai is just back from his summit to Mount Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. “The weather was very very wicked this year. It was impossible to go beyond camp four due to avalanches. But, towards the end, all our patience and perseverance paid off and on May 20, at 8.05am, we made it to the summit of Kanchenjunga. As soon as I hoisted the Indian flag, I could sense a great calmness come over me. It was as if someone had drugged me,” he says with a laugh.