ROURKELA: It’s 5.00 am. Before his parents wake up, 8-year-old Chirayu Oram preps up to climb the hill adjacent to Bondamunda RS Colony along with other children in the neighbourhood. For the next three hours, they learn the various nuances of mountaineering and sports climbing under the watchful eyes of Ashok Vardhan Mishra, a professional mountaineer. There has been no break in this morning ritual for at least 40 children - in the age group of 8 to 15 - of Bondamunda RS Colony near Rourkela for the last five months.
Mishra, the first qualified mountaineer of Sundargarh district is on a mission to turn the Bondamunda RS Colony into an adventure village. He has been imparting free training to youngsters to help them take up mountaineering as an adventure sport and career option. He founded the Rourkela Trekkers Club for the purpose in July this year. These 40 children, all from poor socio-economic backgrounds, have already completed their basic mountaineering training course under the guidance of Mishra.
A resident of Bartoli village near RS Colony, Mishra has set up Kapisa Adventures Pvt Ltd in New Delhi which provides mountaineering training and expedition services. He, however, had to return to his hometown from Delhi following the Covid-19 outbreak. “I realised that despite the presence of mountains in Rourkela, no one was interested in mountaineering. Since schools were closed and children of my village had nothing to do in their free time, I decided to provide mountaineering training to them free of cost”, says Mishra who has authoured five books on expeditions. He has also been creating awareness about mountaineering and sport climbing among the youth in his village.
Helping him in the initiative is his acquaintance and farmer Bisra Oram. Birsa convinced the parents of the children to send them to Mishra for free mountaineering training. His two sons including Chirayu are also training with Mishra. Recently, he set up an artificial 16-ft-high climbing wall for the children at his house. The Rourkela Trekkers Club has currently enrolled 60 children including 50 from poor tribal background and 40 of them have completed their basic training.
“I actually started this as an experiment but more and more children and youth evinced interest in learning mountaineering. So, I decided to make the training an everyday affair”, says Mishra, a degree holder in management studies who quit his bank job to take up a mountaineering course in Uttarkashi. He started his career as a professional mountaineer in Delhi in 2009 and has climbed many numerous mountains across seven countries. Mishra says he targets to train all children in his village - around 250 - in mountaineering, basic rock climbing, sports climbing in due course of time which will turn Bartoli into an adventure village.