Pink City’s 19-year-old Kanishka Vijay has scaled Mount Deotibba (6001m), the second highest peak in Himachal. Kanishka began her Mount Deotibba expedition with 18 other girls of National Cadet Corps (NCC) from the entire country. However, only 5 girls could reach the summit’s 6001m and Kanishka is the only girl from Rajasthan to reach the peak in 22 days.
The trek wasn’t easy for the young girl, but she never thought of giving up, “We faced many problems since there were heavy showers and flood in the state. There was continuous snowfall with rain which made really difficult for us to sleep in our tents, we couldn’t walk. I fell about 5 times and we had to keep changing our tent locations because of flood water everywhere,” said Kanishka. “I couldn’t speak with my family for 20 days since there was no network.
The girls with me did summit on lower peaks but I didn’t let that affect me as I decided that I will do this summit,” she added.
Even after climbing down the mountain, the girls had to walk about 20 km as a bridge on the way to Manali broke. “It was one of a kind experience, something that I will never forget. I took training for this for almost 2 months in Delhi, Uttarkashi, and Manali,” she said.
The budding mountaineer, who is also a national handball player, has previously done a national camp with Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, where she headed her group for the camp and received gold.
