We must take onus of our deeds, or else we perish: Aparna Kumar

Aparna Kumar, Indo-Tibetan Border Police Deputy Inspector General (DIG), has made headlines yet again, this time for scaling Mount Denali in Alaska — the highest peak in North America — becoming the first civil servant to complete the Seven Summits challenge ( challenge of climbing highest point in each of the seven continents.) She has previously gained fame for successfully conquering the South Pole. Excerpts from an interview with WION:

As a passionate mountaiow do you feel about the fact that the glaciers and poles are melting at a very dangerous pace?

The drawbacks are already visible. The places that I have visited are evidence of the fact that climate is changing and glaciers are receding at a very fast rate. But it actually depends upon many factors. The sudden change in climate is not an overnight variation, it is human activities that have led to such adversities. As a mountaineer, I see the effects everywhere. It is more visible now than it was actually before. Even our guides, who have been climbing for 15 years, have witnesses this drastic change.

In recent days, Everest and Nanda Devi have been in news — be it for the bottlenecks at the peaks, bodies retrieval or the tonnes of garbage. What will you say on traffic management?

Adventure hiking has now become very popular and everyone wants to climb Mount Everest and other such peaks, but we need to understand that not everyone can climb mountains. The traffic on Everest is obviously a very serious issue. Every year, large number of inexperienced people are scaling up and they cannot acclimate to the weather conditions. This results in their illness and even death. So, we need to come up with the strictest rules to avoid bottlenecks and other such adversities. Nanda Devi, on the other hand, is not very crowded because it is a tough peak that few people scale. The recent news that had come up was a freak accident and an natural calamity that led to the climbers' death.

In June this year, Aparna Kumar scaled Mount Denali in Alaska — the highest peak in North America

How did you feel as you unfurled the Indian flag after completing your Seven Summits?

It was a big sense of relief because over the past few years, I have been trying hard to complete it, but the extreme weather conditions kept preventing it. This time, I did it before the scheduled time. I was also happy to be the first Indian in my group of climbers to finish in a foreign country. One message that I want to give is — We hold the onus of our deeds. We must take our biodiversity seriously else one day, it will all have perished!

― Zee Media Newsroom