Tarun Saikia. File picture

Guwahati, May 18: A newspaper photograph of a mountaineer during his college days and a daily 1km trek to reach his house on Narengi hill here had sown the seeds of a dream to conquer Mt Everest in Tarun Saikia.

He realised his dream when he became the first from the state to achieve the feat, as part of the elite group of mountaineers to scale the world’s highest peak this morning.

“Around 6.30am we got a call from his team leader, L. Surjit Singh, informing us that Tarun had succeeded in scaling the 29,000-foot Mt Everest. It’s a moment of pride to see that he achieved what he had dreamt of years ago,” Tarun’s mother Charu Saikia told The Telegraph, as she attended to guests who visited the house to congratulate them.

Saikia, 37, had participated in 11 high altitude expeditions across the country since 1993 before leaving for the Mt Everest journey on March 16, along with 15 others as part of the North East India Mt Everest Expedition, his sister-in-law, Badan Das, also a mountaineer, said.

The first expedition to the Everest from Assam had begun way back in 1969 when two Assamese mountaineers — Rohini Kumar Bhuyan and Atanu Prasad Baruah — attempted to scale the tallest mountain but could not fulfil their dreams.

Pranoy Bordoloi, another mountaineer from Assam who had attempted the Everest feat in May last year, had to return because of inclement weather.

He termed Saikia’s achievement as “heroic”. “The journey to the top peak is unimaginably tough as one has to move in temperatures between minus 30 to minus 50 degrees Celsius and wind speeds between 80 and 100 miles per hour. We are extremely happy for him and hope that Saikia’s achievement will help to give mountaineering recognition as a sport in our state,” Bordoloi, also a TV journalist, said.

Bordoloi was 4,500 feet away from the highest peak when bad weather forced him to abandon the journey.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi congratulated Saikia and announced a reward of Rs 20 lakh for Saikia.

The president of the Assam Mountaineering Association, Satyen Sarma, thanked Dispur for announcing the one-time financial assistance, and said they have also requested the chief minister to provide a job to Saikia as he had no regular employment.

“We are very happy for Tarun who is very passionate about mountaineering. He had been part of five expeditions organised by the association,” he said, adding that another self-trained mountaineer from Guwahati, Manish Kumar Deka, would be taking a shot at the summit tomorrow morning.