Aparna Kumar, an Uttar Pradesh cadre IPS officer, scaled the highest peak in Antarctica last week, becoming India’s first civil servant to do it, reported The Times of India.
Aparna, posted as DIG telecom in Lucknow, climbed the 16,000-feet-high (4,892 metres) Mount Vinson Massif on January 17. She had set out for the expedition on January 5, as part of a 10-member team of mountaineers from across the world, the report said.
This is how Akhilesh Yadav-led UP government congratulated her:
The challenges involved trudging through ice and snow in -35 degrees temperatures, surviving icy winds blowing at 100km/hour, and pulling a sledge-full of luggage to the summit.
But Aparna did it, and eventually hoisted the Tricolour – along with the flag of the Uttar Pradesh Police Service – on the peak on January 17.
Aparna, a 2002 batch IPS, will return to India on February 5, and is currently recovering from mild frost bite.
An accomplished mountaineer
With this achievement, Aparna now has scaled 5 of the 7 summits that are counted among the most challenging in the world, including Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (the highest peak in Africa) and the Carstensz Pyramid peak in Indonesia (the highest peak in Australia and Oceania region).
She is now eyeing the Mount Everest in the upcoming months of April and May.