Six students from Lawrence School, Himachal Pradesh on Tuesday set a record by becoming the youngest to scale Mt. Everest.
Five boys from the hill state also climbed the Everest at the same time as they were part of the nine member National Cadet Corps (NCC) team.
Earlier, they undertook a cycling expedition in the Thar Desert, covering more than 1,000 km in nine days.
Four of the seven are from Punjab while the rest hail from Delhi, Himachal and Uttar Pradesh. And it included six class XII students,Prithvi Singh Chahal, Fateh Singh Brar, Guribadat Singh Somal , Ajay Sohal and Shubham Kaushik and Raghav Juneja-a class X student of the school.
Juneja was the baby of the team. The seventh member of the team, Haqiqat Singh, was not allowed to climb after reaching 27,600 feet following problems with oxygen supply.
Before scaling the Everest, the team underwent training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling.
During the training phase, besides climbing two major peaks in the Kanchenjunga area, the students were given high-altitude training in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.
The team was part of a ‘Teens Tame Everest’ campaign, supported by adventure gear major Woodland. The expedition was flagged off on April 5 from India.
The team, had undergone a five-month extensive training from September 2012 to January 2013 in all formats of stamina build-up, fitness as well as adventure sports to equip them, expedition leader Colonel Neeraj Rana said.
Lawrence School Headmaster Praveen Vasisht said: “Conquest of Everest was not a mere step, but a giant leap for Sanawar. We are proud of our boys, due to whom the name of the school is now recorded in history forever.” A team consisting of nine NCC cadets, which also included students from Himachal Pradesh-- Rajat Ram and Khimi Ram from Government Senior Secondary School Manali.
The cadets were trained by the Army at the Siachen glacier.