CALCUTTA TRIO SCALE EVEREST ON THIRD ATTEMPT 

Three Calcuttans, including a middle-aged couple, have reached the top of the world, capping a mountaineering partnership of several successes, failures and a brush with death during the Nepal earthquake last year.

The husband-wife team of Pradeep and Chetna Sahoo along with fellow climber Debraj Dutta scaled Mount Everest on Thursday in their third attempt in three years. Their earlier efforts had been thwarted by conditions.

Pradeep, the director of a mining company, divides his time between Calcutta and Africa. He is 50 while wife Chetna, a homemaker, is a year younger.

The Tollygunge residents, who have been climbing for years, have a son and a daughter, both in school. They started training for Everest around five years ago.

Dutta, a 35-year-old resident of Behala, is a mountaineering trainer who has been climbing for years.

The trio have been on several expeditions together. In 2013, Pradeep and Debraj had reached the top of Plateau Peak, a tough climb in the eastern Karakoram range, as part of a four-member team.

For the Sahoos, age has never been a barrier to climbing. And when it comes to attempting an Everest climb, even someone three decades older has done it. After making his first Everest attempt at the age of 70, Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura reached the summit in 2013 at the age of 80.

Friends of the city trio in touch with the agency that organised the Everest climb were told that Dutta made the ascent to Everest around 9 in the morning and the Sahoos followed a little later.

"They have climbed the summit and the Sherpas informed us about their success through satellite phones. They are now descending," Rishi Bhandari, the owner of Sartory Adventures, the agency that organised the climb, told Metro from Nepal.

The trio from the city are in a 10-member group put together by Sartory Adventures.

Bhandari said Chetna had suffered frostbite after successfully scaling the peak and had to be rescued from the south summit to Camp IV.

On May 11, a nine-member team that reached the top of Mount Everest (8,850 metres) became the first to scale the world's tallest peak from the Nepal side since the massive 2015 earthquake and a deadly avalanche the year before.

The 2014 avalanche in the treacherous Khumbu icefall had killed 16 mountain guides. In 2015, 18 people died when the earthquake sent a massive snowslide careening into Everest Base Camp.

In May last year, Pradeep and Chetna were making their way up from Base Camp when the ground beneath their feet shook. Moments later, a huge mass of ice and stones came hurtling down towards them. They were among the fortunate ones to survive.

Dutta had returned to Base Camp from Camp I a couple of days before the earthquake and was to climb again when the catastrophe occurred.

Everest is usually scaled after making several to and fro movements between Base Camp and higher altitudes for better acclimatisation.

In 2015, the Sahoo couple had shown resilience despite the earthquake and were waiting at Base Camp for permission to make the ascent. But the expedition was called off after the extent of the calamity dawned.

Metro had spoken to the Sahoos last year while they were camping at Base Camp waiting for the administration's nod. "We were practising for the climb to the higher reaches when we suddenly saw people, clothes, stones and debris being carried by a strong gust of wind," Pradeep had told Metro then.

The flying debris had hit him on the right side of the head and he suffered partial loss of hearing. Once the weather cleared, he said: "It's perfect for our climb now. We are waiting for the route to be opened."

Till last year, the couple had spent Rs 60 lakh, four months in the mountains and two years training to fulfil their dream of reaching Everest. Dutta took loans to meet the cost of his expeditions.

Before leaving for Nepal on April 2, Pradeep had told his friends: "This is the third and last time I am going to attempt Everest."

Some more climbers from Bengal are in line to make an attempt to scale Everest over the next few days.