Bachendri Pal (right) at a news meet. Pix: Bhola Prasad

Jamshedpur, April 14: The Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TSAF) today announced the 11-member all-India women team for the expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

The team, which will be led by ace climber Bachendri Pal, comprises Anita Soren, L. Annapurna, Premlata Agarwal, Chetna Sahoo (all from Jharkhand), Lovely Das (Bengal), Kalpana Dash (Orissa), Parul Sahu (Madhya Pradesh), Gangotri (Gujarat), Sushma Bissa (Rajasthan) and Geeta Tolia (Uttarakhand).

The team will leave Jamshedpur on June 17. Partha Sengupta, the vice-president (corporate services), Tata Steel, will be seeing off the team from Delhi on June 23. The team is expected to return on July 5. Addressing a press meet this evening, Pal, the chief of adventure programmes, said the expedition was being undertaken to mark Tata Steel’s centenary year. Pal said that Lovely, Parul, Kalpana, Geeta and Gangotri are the new entrants in the team. “Though the rest of the women have been part of our earlier expeditions to Karakoram Pass, Island Peak, Trans-Himalayan and Thar desert but for other members, Mt Kilimanjaro would be a new and unique experience,” she said, adding that the expedition to Mt Kilimanjaro (altitude 19,340ft) would be of 15 days.

“We will be required to scale the mountain in seven days. We have chosen a very treacherous route.,” she said, adding the temperature in June at Mt Kilimanjaro would be between 5 and 10°c.

“We won’t have much time for acclimatisation,” she added.