It was terrifying on Mt Everest: Youngest Indian to climb Mount Everest

Arjun Vajpai is all of 17, loves Maggi noodles and supports Spain in the ongoing FIFA tournament (“But they lost,” he says dolefully, shaking his head). He likes psychology, and his friends teasingly call him Himalayaputra. If the last bit sounds a little strange, it’s because Arjun is now the youngest Indian to climb Mount Everest.

The summit of Mount Everest is a flat 6’x4’ surface, standing approximately 30,000 feet above sea level. It is bedecked by Tibetan prayer flags as well as a small Buddha statue resting quietly in the middle. Not more than seven people can stand on the summit. It was there Arjun stood on May 22 and saw the Earth move below him.

“Time flies up there,” he said, adding, “The view is mesmerising.”  Arjun was 10 years old when he started trekking under the watchful eye of his father captain Vajpai and colonel Dhillon at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Mountaineering at Uttarkarshi. 

“That was when the training really began. After the beginner’s course, I moved on to advanced. Training is a lifelong process. You can’t one day decide to climb Mount Everest. You need a physical and mental stamina that only comes over time,” he said.
Arjun played mental games with himself to keep his energy going on the month and a half long expedition, convincing himself that the next four steps were the last ones, that the next hour was the last one.

Before the climb begins, climbers pray to the mountain goddess and ask her for permission to sleep on the mountain. The initial climbing has to be done in the dead of the night when the weather is calm. It was at 10pm one night when Arjun started the longest walk of his life. It was only at five pm the next day he and the rest of his team could stop for a rest. The team included climbers from Finland, Mexico, Canada and Nepal.

Lack of oxygen, extreme weather, exhaustion and frostbite are some of the problems climbers face on Everest. But the parts you don’t expect are the most chilling.

“Climbing the Southern path, I had to climb the Lhotse face, a 3,700 feet wall of blue ice which is at a 90° incline. The drop below is into a bottomless crevasse. I was stuck on this wall for three minutes because of a mistake I made with the ropes. It was at this point I finally thought: forget this mountain, I’m going home!” Arjun said.

“But then my sherpa came to my rescue, helping me return to the right position.” Everest is littered — with empty oxygen tanks, human waste, water bottles — and around 250 human bodies. “It was terrifying,” Arjun admits. “There are bodies that look like climbers who have stopped for a rest. It’s only when you get closer that you realise they’re dead.”

He now intends to travel to the South and North Pole. “I will have to learn to ski for that expedition. I’ll try to do that within a year, logistics and financing permitting.” he says matter-of-factly.

His mum shakes her head smilingly. “I worry about him so much. He had always talked about climbing Everest, and I have to admit I hoped it was just a passing phase. But then his teachers commented on his natural ability.” Then she smiles proudly at her son and says, “We are encouraging him in every way.”

Arjun is overwhelmed by the media attention, and hopes no one ever asks him again how he “feels”. “One journalist actually asked my mother whether I’d received marriage proposals,” he says disbelievingly. “Isn’t that child marriage?”