Chandernagore’s Piyali Basak scales Mount Lhotse, too

The news of her conquering two mountains back-to-back has been hailed by her well-wishers

Piyali Basak on her way to the top of Mount Everest

Snehamoy Chakraborty   |   TT  |  Calcutta   |    25.05.22  : Piyali Basak of Chandernagore scaled Mount Lhotse on Tuesday, barely two days after she had conquered Mount Everest, the tallest peak in the world.

The primary school teacher from Chandernagore in Hooghly district had reached the top of Everest (8,848.86m) in Nepal almost without oxygen and returned to the base camp-4 safely on Sunday morning. She started climbing Lhotse (8,516m), located on the Nepal border with the Tibetan Autonomous region, on Tuesday morning and reached the peak in the evening.

Lhotse is the fourth highest mountain in the world.

“Piyali successfully conquered Lhotse with oxygen. She has safely returned to camp-3 this evening,” said Nivesh Karki, the manager of Pioneer Adventure Private Limited in Nepal, the agency handling Piyali’s Everest and Lhotse expeditions.

Sources, however said, there had been early records of climbers scaling two 8,000m-plus mountains in short duration.

Chhanda Gayen, an mountaineer from Hooghly, had climbed Everest and Lhotse in a span of 22 hours. Chhanda is considered to be the fastest Indian to complete the task within a short span. She died in an avalanche in 2014 while climbing Mount Kanchenjungha.

The news of Piyali conquering two mountains back-to-back has been hailed by her well-wishers.

“I am so glad for the success of Piyali that I can’t find any words to congratulate her. We were anxious when we heard about her next attempt to climb Lhotse. But she made it. We are now worried about her dues of Rs 10 lakh to the agency. The money is yet to be arranged,” said Kalyan Chakraborty, secretary of Giridoot, a mountaineering Association.

Hundreds of people across Bengal joined hands to raise funds for Piyali’s summit through crowd-funding for over a month.

After she conquered Mount Everest, the raising of funds started abroad also.

A well-wisher of Piyali, who works in a private company in Tokyo, has approached several organisations and Indian nationals in Japan to help Piyali repay her dues.

“When I came to know about Piyali’s financial troubles, I started approaching individuals, especially Indians, and organisations in Japan. Let’s see how much we can collect through this crowd-funding drive,” said Suchhando Chatterjee from Tokyo.

The Hooghly district administration has planned to arrange for a felicitation for Piyali after she returns home.

District magistrate Deepap Priya P. said she was communicating with some corporate houses to find financial support for Piyali.

“We are proud of Piyali for her achievement and plan to felicitate her in a big way after she returns home. We also know about her financial crisis and will try to help her.”