Nine-year-old Pranjay Jhuria (extreme right) atop Mount Ladaki

Aug. 5: Pranjay Jhuria may be only nine years old, but has learnt to dream big. The Class III student has already scaled 18,300 feet but thirsts for greater heights.

For Pranjay, who became the youngest mountaineer in the country to reach that height, the sky is now the limit.

Accompanied by his mountaineer father, Ashok Kumar Jhuria, Pranjay scaled Mount Ladakhi in the Pir Panjal ranges of Himachal Pradesh on July 24. His father was the leader of the group of five mountaineers. The three other mountaineers were Bhubaneswar Thakur, Gita Thakur and Durga Thakur, all from Himachal Pradesh.

The boy’s father said he realised his son’s feat only after he met members of the Indian Mountaineering Federation in Delhi. The federation does not train people below 16 years.

Pranjay, a student of Maria Public School here, has also scaled Mount Chitidhar (17,243 feet) in the Pir Panjal range of the western Himalayas.

The shy youngster said, “It felt good to reach the top. We were so close to nature.

“It was also great fun to pitch tents with intermittent rain and icy wind lashing us,” Pranjay said.

Ashok, who had scaled the 23,000-feet Mount Gorichen earlier, said Pranjay often pestered him to take him along to the mountains. “I knew he had the stamina but was not sure whether he could climb the icy mountains,” he said.

Ashok said that hard snow and loose rocks made the climb to Mount Chetidhar a difficult one. “We reached the peak on July 23 and celebrated the night by singing songs and having dinner,” he said.

However, scaling Mount Ladakhi was the best experience for the team. “We performed a small puja at the peak and celebrated by building a campfire at the base camp and having a big meal,” Ashok added.

“It was a very different experience altogether. We had to collect Himalayan herbs as medicines in case anybody fell,” Ashok said, adding that they took photographs whenever the sky was clear.

He said the mountainous Northeast has a great scope in adventure sports and people could go to Arunachal Pradesh on expeditions. “The youths should take more interest in adventure sports,” he added.

According to the Limca Book of Records, 2004, Prarthana S. Vaidya of Vadodara scaled the 20,079 feet Mount Kalindi at 11 years on June 17, 2001.

Five-year-old Akshansh Dogra of Delhi with seven-year-old sister Sakshi reached the 12,770 feet to reach Gaumukh in Uttaranchal on May 31, 2002.

General secretary of the Assam Mountaineering Association Kishore Kumar Baruah said Pranjay’s feat would elevate the status of Assam in the mountaineering scenario and inspire more youngsters to take to the sport.

As for Pranjay, it is only a matter of time before he can go trekking again with his father in search of new peaks to scale. And he also loves the feasts that accompany the climbs. After all, what he remembers most from the Mount Ladakhi trip is the halwa he had after the group performed puja at the peak.