KATHMANDU —
An Indian climber banned from
Everest after faking a summit of the world’s
highest mountain has successfully scaled the peak for real, telling AFP he
returned to “prove” himself.
اضافة اعلان
Narender Singh
Yadav claimed to have reached the top of the 8,849m mountain in May 2016. But
photos of the 26-year-old at the summit were later shown to have been digitally
altered, prompting the
Nepal government to revoke recognition of his feat.
Yadav and two other climbers were issued a six-year ban backdated to 2016, and
this was the first year he was able to return to the mountain.
“Everest is a
dream for all of us but Everest is life for me,” Yadav told AFP on Friday.
“There were a lot of allegations on me... that’s why I (had to) prove myself
and climb Everest.”
Yadav maintains
he reached the summit but that the expedition leader doctored his photos and
posted them on social media after he was nominated for India’s prestigious
Tenzing Norgay Adventure Award in 2020. The award was subsequently withheld, an
experience Yadav said was “very painful for me and my family”.
His ban ended on
May 20. Seven days later, he was on the summit — this time with an ample cache of
photos and videos to prove his feat.
“We granted him
a certificate on Wednesday after he presented enough evidence of his Everest
summit,” said Nepal tourism department official Bishma Raj Bhattrai.
Pemba Rita Sherpa,
a guide with expedition organizer Pioneer Adventure, said that two guides
accompanied him instead of the usual one to make sure there were no disputes.
“We took many photos and videos of him,” he said. “We have to speak what is
real. It is about our Sherpas’ reputation and the company’s reputation.”
A successful
Everest summit is the crowning achievement of any climber’s career, and many go
on to forge careers as motivational speakers and authors. The current system of
authentication requires photos along with reports from team leaders and government
liaison officers stationed at the base camp — but it has been open to fraud
attempts.
An Indian couple were banned for 10 years in 2016
after they published doctored photos purporting to show them at the top of
Everest. The pair — both police constables — superimposed themselves and their
banners onto photos taken by another Indian climber at the summit.
This year, a rare window
of good weather has allowed more than 500 climbers and guides to reach the
Everest summit since a team of Nepali climbers opened the route on May 7. The
Himalayan nation reopened its peaks to mountaineers last year after the
coronavirus pandemic shut down the industry in 2020.
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