Cop, BSF constable among 3 from Bengal to scale Everest

Kolkata: Three climbers from Bengal reached the summit of Mount Everest in the last two days. Shuvam Chatterjee also climbed Mount Lhotse the day after his Everest summit while Lakshmikanta Mandal made it to the summit for the second time. The third climber was Munmun Ghosh. Chatterjee, a businessman from Hind Motor, reached the Everest peak at 2.15 pm on Wednesday. "I started from Camp IV around 11 pm on Tuesday. The weather was fine and we were going at a good pace. I set a target of climbing both Mount Everest and Mount Lhotse in six hours. That is the world record set by Mingma Dorchi Sherpa, and I was chasing that. I have been training myself accordingly over the past several years," he said over phone from the Everest Base Camp."There was huge traffic this time and our team had to slow down because of the slow pace of the climbers ahead of us. Many climbers I came across this time needed support even to pull their carabineers. It was very unfortunate. When we reached the Hillary Step area, we had to wait for nearly 2.5 hours. The wind and snow shower continued to challenge our endurance," Chatterjee said.He came down to Camp IV at 11 pm on Wednesday, rested for five hours and set out for Mount Lhotse. "We made it to the summit of Mount Lhotse at 4.15 pm on Thursday. On both climbs, high wind and snow showers were the biggest hurdles," he said. At 30, Chatterjee is the youngest from Bengal to have made it to Mount Everest and Mount Lhotse during the same expedition.Ghosh, a constable with the Border Security Force and a resident of Garia, made it to the summit of Mount Everest at 8 am on Thursday. "A student of Murlidhar Girls College, Munmun was trained at the National Cadet Corps under me. I spotted her interest in climbing and encouraged her for advanced climbing courses. Later, she joined BSF and started going on consecutive expeditions," said Mita Dhar, her instructor at the NCC. "The BSF's first all-women mountaineering team, comprising constable Kouser Fatima from Ladakh, constable Munmun Ghosh from Bengal, constable Rabeka Singh from Uttarakhand, and constable Tsering Chorol from Kargil, successfully summited Mt Everest. Celebrating the BSF Diamond Jubilee Year, the Mahila Seema Praharis carried the spirit of ‘Vande Mataram' to the top of the world," BSF wrote on its official Facebook handle.West Bengal Police constable Lakshmikanta Mandal reached the Everest summit at 7.40 am on Thursday. "He is the second Bengali who has made it to the Everest summit twice. Earlier, Satyabrata Dam made it to the Everest summit twice in 2004 and 2013," said Debraj Dutta, an Everest summiteer.