A 7-year-old boy Virat Chandra from Hyderabad scales Mount Kilimanjaro

A seven-year-old boy from Hyderabad became one of the youngest people to scale Mount Kilimanjaro. Virat Chandra has made the country proud as he scaled the world's largest free-standing mountain and Africa's tallest mountain Kilimanjaro. He climbed the mountain peak on March 6 with his coach Bharat Thammineni after doing one-month of rigorous training.

Virat scales Mount Kilimanjaro

Virat had a desire to climb after listening to the inspiring stories of the experiences of his cousins. He then told about his interest in climbing with his parents. His parents had then approached his now coach Bharath to train him. He and his coach had followed all the precautions during the journey. Virat told ANI that he was scared to do it but he wanted to achieve his goal. His mother said that her son got excited at listening to his cousins' stories and wanted to do something similar. She said that Virat in a video call with his cousins was fascinated when he saw them at Rudugaira Mountains in Uttarakhand where they had gone for a trekking trip. 

"I was scared but all I wanted was to reach my goal," he said.

His coach Bharat Thammineni said that he decided to take Virat for mountaineering after rigorous training of one month. He added that Virat was very excited to train, unlike others who quit midway through the training. He said Virat took the training seriously and completed all the tasks including running and mock climbing with dedication. He told ANI that they had started the journey on March 5 and in between they took rest. As Virat is still a child so they took all the precautions so that he does not feel uneasy. They had started the climb on March 5 and reached the Uhuru peak of Kilimanjaro on March 6.

9-year-old girl had scaled Mt Kilimanjaro

Meanwhile, in February, a nine-year-old girl Kadapala Rithvika Sri, from Andhra Pradesh, became Asia's youngest girl to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa in Tanzania. She also became the world's second-youngest female climber of Mount Kilimanjaro as at 5,685 meters above sea level, the girl reached Gilman's point. IAS officer Gandham Chandrudu from the Anantapuram district aided her by releasing ₹ 2.89 lakh from the SC Corporation for her expedition on February 1.

(Image and Inputs from ANI)