Dehradun, May 21
Twentyfive years after Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to climb Mount Everest, another woman from Uttarakhand hill scaled the world’s highest peak on Thursday. Kavita Budathoki (24) from Uttarkashi was part of the ten-member team of Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) that unfurled the Tricolour on the Everest this morning, said an elated Col IS Thapa, principal of NIM.

The team, including soldiers on deputation from the Indian Army, left Delhi on April 3 and reached Everest Base Camp (5400m) on April 15. By May 6, the members had established Camp I, II, III and V, but due to hostile weather, they had to move down to the base camp.

“The members —Kavita Budathoki, Vinod Gusain, Vishveshwar Semwal, SS Bodh, Love Raj Singh, Dinesh Singh, Pratap Singh, Surendra Singh, Sital Singh, Dashrath Singh Rawat and Kushal Singh Rana — divided in two groups of five each, climbed the summit at 0500 hours and 0600 hours, respectively,” informed Thapa.

“The climbers had to battle high-altitude sickness and an avalanche, but they kept moving on,”said Thapa.

PTI adds: Krishna Patil, a 19-year-old Pune girl, also scaled the Mount Everest today, becoming the first Maharashtrian woman mountaineer to perform the feat. “Krishna, who was part of the ten-member team ‘Asian Trekking’ commissioned in Nepal, climbed the dream peak at 0700 hours today,” her mother Ranjana Patil told PTI, quoting a satellite communication received from her daughter. Incidentally, 2009 is the golden jubilee year of the first Indian expedition to Everest. The NIM expedition commemorates 45 years of existence of the premier national institute.