City mountaineers dream coming unstuck

‘No one supports adventure sports in Telangana,’ Hyderabad-based mountaineer Bada Ramesh laments, and justifiably so. He recently climbed ‘Machoi Peak’ in Jammu & Kashmir and ‘Mirathang’ in Arunachal Pradesh. But he find it to surmount difficulties of funds constraints when it comes to scaling his dream destination, the Mount Everest. His passionate dream seems to come apart at the seams. 

Hailing from Rajanna Siricilla district, Ramesh’s family shifted to Suraram, Hyderabad, 18 years ago to earn bread and butter. His father works as a security guard at an ATM in the city and his mother is daily labor. He recently climbed 14,108 ft Mirathang mountain in Arunachal Pradesh and 17,907 ft Machoi Peak’ mountain in Jammu & Kashmir. 

Ramesh said, “I was inspired to take up mountaineering after watching success stories of many mountaineers on television. To pursue my dream, I joined in the Basic Mountaineering Course in Adventure Club of Telangana and later I did Indian Mountaineering Course in Arunachal Pradesh. Kolla Ranga Rao, former president of Indian Mountaineering Foundation helped me with various tips,” He emerged as the winner in the ‘Pre-World Water Cup Rappelling Competitions’ in the ‘reverse trekking’ category held at Adilabad in 2016 where he must climb down from 350 ft height to complete the task. 

He climbed up and down the 80-ft surface, a task in ‘sports climbing’ category for 13 consecutive times within 24 hours, organised as part of the International Olympics Day recently in the city.  Ramesh is not only a mountaineer, but he is also an expert in rock climbing, rafting, jumaring, boating, para-cycling, spider web, river crossing, sports climbing and more and participated in many national events. 

He said his dream was to climb the Mount Everest along with the other six summits in the world and to represent Telangana State at the global level. At present, he was working in a mountaineering club in the city and guiding kids about adventure sports. Ramesh added, “We need to spend lakhs of money to climb any mountain. At present, I’m focusing more on going with a group of mountaineers to lessen the financial burden on my parents. 

We don’t have many sponsors in Telangana for the adventure sports. Even our political leaders are not interested to help the young adventurers. In Karnataka, they have a special budget allocation for the adventure sports to encourage budding athletes,”He said that it costs Rs 30 lakhs for a single mountaineer to scale the Mount Everest and hoping that he will get the sponsors soon to materialize his dream into reality.