“There are two different lists of the highest summit in each continent, because of confusion about the height of one of the peaks. In total, they list about eight summits. So I went and climbed all of them, just to be safe,” says Satyarup Siddhanta, part of the elite ‘seven-summiteer’ class of mountaineers, who have climbed the highest peak in every continent.
His last expedition was at the end of January, and the IT professional doesn’t have much time to get used to paved roads, running water and other urban comforts of Bengaluru before he pushes off to his next destination — the North Pole.
“I have my tickets booked for March 31,” he says, “If I don’t do it now, I will miss the opportunity to take India to the top. I want to be the youngest person in the world to complete the Explorer’s Grand Slam.”
This involves the seven summits as well as both poles, explains the 35-year-old over a cup of coffee, soon after a potential sponsorship meeting in Chennai. He turns 36 on April 29. “I am still short of funds, despite family loans and my friends pitching in,” he says. This necessitated a short trip to Tamil Nadu, the State where he had his first taste of the mountains, even before his formal training in 2011.
“My first big mountain was in 2012, but it was in 2008 that I went to Parvathamalai in Tamil Nadu with a friend,” he recalls. It was a light trek, but it was the first time that Satyarup saw the sight of clouds below his feet, instead of far above his head. And he was hooked.
“I grew up in a small town in Bengal. So in my childhood, I hadn’t even known that people could explore mountains in India. I used to think that trekking was something that only happened in far off lands, in Tintin books,” he confesses.
Now, Satyarup has had a good taste of India’s mountain ranges, climbed all the peaks that claim to be highest in each continent, and also been to the South Pole. But he refuses to use terms like ‘easy’, ‘difficult’ or ‘expert’. “I have seen highly experienced sherpas cross me while falling to their deaths; I have lost friends in the mountains who had climbed many more mountains than I had,” he says, “The mountains are tough on everyone.”
- The Bass and Messner lists are the two most commonly followed by aspiring seven summiteers
- The point of contention is whether just Australia should be considered the seventh continent, or all of Australasia
- American mountaineer Richard Bass considered Australia as the continent, and Mount Kosciuszko its highest summit
- Canadian Pat Morrow and Italian Reinhold Messner, however, opine that Carstensz Pyramid on the island of Irian Jaya is the highest point on the Australasian continental mass.
- The other highest peaks are Everest in Asia, Aconcagua in South America, Denali in North America, Elbrus in Russia, Kilimanjaro in Africa and Vinson in Antarctica.
Money matters
He was fairly inexperienced when he first added Mount Everest to his list — in fact, he says it is that ignorance that gave him the confidence to dream about it. But as he educated himself, what shocked him was not the difficulty and the risks — he saw all that coming — but the money involved.
“I read that it costs ₹35 lakhs to climb Everest, and I felt my dream shattering. I calculated how many years it would take for me to save that amount, if I didn’t spend a single penny from my salary on anything else,” he recalls, laughing. But he decided to put that thought on hold, and take one step at a time. His first was graduating from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, and then he took it summit by summit. He has been trapped in blizzards, suffered frostbites, braved tribal conflicts and faced other challenges, to become a seven summitter by 2018.
Now, he has his eyes set on the North Pole. “If I don’t do it this summer, I will have to wait for another year,” he says. And that, for him, is too late.
You can contribute to Satyarup’s expedition through ketto.org/GrandSlamSatya.