After Everest Base Camp, 8-year-old Bengaluru girl summits Mt Kilimanjaro

Aadya Bennur, an eight-year-old student of Greenfield Public School in Benglauru has summited Mount Kilimanjaro to become one of the youngest in the world to scale the 19,340 ft peak in Africa. This comes close on the heels of Aadya trekking to Everest Base Camp in June last year.

The young girl’s interest in climbing sparked off when she accompanied her father, Harsha, on small hiking and trekking trips on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Harsha himself took to climbing at the age of 37 after listening to a motivational talk by Tenzing Jamling Norgay, who had been invited to his office in Bengaluru.

Jamling is the son of Tenzing Norgay, who was the first in the world to scale Mount Everest along with Edmund Hillary. The meeting and the subsequent conversation inspired Harsha to “climb” a new path.

Fit to climb

While taking Aadya on small hiking trips to hills in Karnataka, Harsha noticed that her fitness levels were quite good for a seven-year-old. During the pandemic, he had ensured that she remained fit, and soon after, she took up tennis, which helped her immensely. Harsha, who trekked to Everest Base Camp in 2017, casually asked Aadya in 2022 whether she’d like to try climbing mountains.

“Till then, I didn’t know much about Everest Base Camp, only that my dad had trekked there before. I didn’t know how easy or difficult it was going to be, but I knew my dad would be with me the whole time, and so I said yes,” Aadya tells HerStory.

Seven years old at that time, she trained hard for a month, and apart from her usual fitness regime like climbing up and down stairs, she swam a lot and walked long hours to prepare for the climb.

“I understand that to climb the mountain, I needed more strength in the lower body and my feet had to get used to walking for endless hours. I trained specifically for this climb for around a month, and I was good to go,” she adds.

Starting the trek from Lukla in Nepal, Aadya remembers it was raining heavily when they alighted from the helicopter, and the path was filled with slush.

“I remember there were a lot of dogs around, we stopped at a hut, where I had some chocolate, a bath, and later had daal bhaat (dal rice).” Aadya also introduces me to a chant that’s her favourite on the climb, dal bhaat power, every hour.

The innocence is striking, but the fortitude is even more admirable. It takes around 10 days to trek from Lukla to Everest Base Camp that is located at 17,598 ft.

The base camp climbing season usually ends by May and there weren’t many people on the trek. Aadya travelled with her father and the guides.

“In fact, she literally breezed through the Everest base Camp trek. Where it was a flat or gradual incline, I could keep up with her as I was taller. But when it came to steep inclines, she was way faster,” says Harsha.

The only time she really felt tired was on Day 1 when she remembers crying a lot. Things got easier from Day 2, and the path upwards was both scenic and beautiful till they reached the top.

The path, less travelled

After Everest Base Camp, Aadya decided to follow Harsha’s path again, this time to Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa.  

“My dad had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2018, and I wanted to go there too. We continued with step climbing, dropped swimming and focussed more on running and walking for three months to prepare for the climb,” says Aadya.

She admits that the daily grind did get to her a few times, when she wasn’t too keen to train, but her parents gently coaxed her to stick to a routine. But it was more momentary, and soon she’d be back to her regimen.

“We landed in Kilimanjaro Airport via Adidas Ababa in Eithopia. We went to an office to meet a group that was going to accompany us on the climb. But sadly, they had dropped out and it was just the two of us again, with the guides,” she says.

There are five different routes to Kilimanjaro, the easiest being the Marangu route that would take around 5-6 days, but which Harsha says is not the best to manage acclimatization. They chose the Lemosho route, a longer and tougher one that involves more climbing and around seven-and-a-half days.

Harsha also recollects the challenges of the arduous climb and the moments of despair.

“We were climbing for more than 10 hours every day. On the summit night, we had to start climbing at midnight to be able to reach at around 11 am. We had walked around 17-and-a-half hours that day, extremely long for an eight-year-old. It was challenging because we were in minus 20 degrees weather.”

He adds that there were times when she came quite close to quitting, and as a father, seeing her condition, he thought so, too. But somewhere on that climb, both of them were able to move on, and make it to the top.

In between all the climbing, the young girl is also concerned about the environment. She would often pick up trash and hold it until she found a dust bin while on the climb to Everest Base Camp. “I hate it when I see people dirtying roads or even mountains with litter,” she says.

Aadya’s next goal is Mount Elbrus in Russia in September this year. Training has already begun. There are more mountains to climb, and summits to conquer.   

(The story has been updated to correct a typo - they were climbing for 10 hours every day.)