Malavath Poorna – a 13 year-old Indian Tribal school girl became the youngest girl in the world to climb Mount Everest, the World’s tallest mountain. She hoisted the National Flag and offerred a salute to B R Ambedkar. May 25th, 2014 .
A new Record of ‘New Age Scale’
Poorna climbed the mountain braving the minus 60 degrees celsium temperatures of Mount Everest from the Tibetan side which is a much more difficult climb. Most climbers attempt the 8,848-metre (29,029-feet) Everest from the Nepalese* side which is easier of two.
At 13 years,11 months, Poorna is just a month older that the world’s youngest Everest climber – American Jordan Romero who scaled the peak in 2010, when he was 13 years,11 months.
She was accompanied on the 52-day-long journey by B. Shekhar Babu of Nalgonda, an experienced mountaineer, her friend 18 year-old boy Sadhanapalli Ananad Kumar – son of a cycle mechanic and a group of Sherpas.
Poorna and Anand were trained at the ‘Himalayan Mountaineering Institute’ in Darjeeling
Both parents of Malavath Poorna , mother Lakshmi and father Devidas work as agricultural labourers in a small tribal village ‘Pakala’, Srikonda mandal in Nizamabad district of Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana), a state in Southern India.
*Nepal does not allow climbers under 16 years of age to scale the mountain