Hyderabad: City kids raring to scale heights

If you are looking for adventures, with a dash of adrenaline rush, mountaineering offers plenty of it as it involves hiking, walking and climbing. It affords you the pleasure of climb in raw physical sense.

With many people from Telugu people scaling summits, mountain climbing is now a growing adventure hobby among the youth and even the old raring to tread the fine line between life and death. But many parents in the city want their children to turn mountaineers.

Children as young as 7 years are seen taking to trekking and mountaineering. Explaining the sudden growth in demand for mountaineering training in Hyderabad, Bharat, founder and director of Boots and Crampons, says, "Recently, a Class II student Virat Chandra from Hyderabad scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, and created a record. His impact on his generation is such that they are lining up to train in mountain climbing."

It's just not easy as people think and it's really not difficult to do too. Everything can be achieved only after facing a few obstacles and children must be mentally fit to do it, he says.

On training kids to climb mountains, a coach says, "Training an adult is quite different from training a kid as he/she will have only excitement but not enough stamina. To build such stamina in them, we train them for at least 90 days daily from 5 pm to 6 pm by taking them for a trek. Before training, we inform parents about all aspects of it and it completely depends on children to summit the heights.

Speaking about his experience, Virat Chandra said, "My cousins have been to trekking and video-called me. From then, I wanted to go and climb mountains just like them, and, today am well-trained and also climbed a big mountain."

On his training, Virat informed that the trainers first do physical evaluation. He was asked to take part in a 5K run to prove his mettle. They gradually raise difficult levels in training. "As part of the training I ran almost 6 km every day, used to do sit-ups and even yoga (Suryanamaskara, meditation, Anulom Vilom and Kapalbhati). This physical training was headed by Bharath sir and closely coordinated by Saiteja sir. Bharath sir has chosen Mt Kilimanjaro, stating that it would be ideal to travel and climb. I am happy to accomplish the mission I have thought of. I thank each and everyone who has been a strong pillar of support for my endeavour." His Mother Madhavi said that nothing made them step back in the face of his strong will power and, finally, he did it.