GUWAHATI, June 17 � Everest climbers Tarun Saikia and Manish Deka said that scaling the world�s highest peak last month marked the fulfillment of the fond dream they had cherished right from their childhood days.
The duo said that they were not content with the first success but would continue to aspire to scale the earth�s summit as many times as possible.
They were speaking at a felicitation organized under the auspices of the Guwahati Senior Citizens� Association (GSCA) at Pensioners� Bhawan here recently. They said that an average mountaineer was to incur an expenditure of about Rs 24 lakh individually for a single expedition to Everest.
Congratulating the climbers on their monumental achievement, GSCA president DN Chakravartty said that while the Assamese people had for generations remembered Ananda Ram Baruah as the first ICS and the first graduate, Jagannath Baruah as the first graduate of upper Assam, and Bhogeswar Baruah as the first Asian gold medalist, posterity in Assam would remember those two illustrious sons of Assam as the first Assamese to challenge the dreaded heights of the snow-capped Himalayas against heavy odds.
Kamaleswar Bora, former Vice Chancellor of Dibrugarh University, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta of Assam Mountaineering Association, Tabiul Hussain and Bijuli Sarma, in their speeches, congratulated Saikia and Deka on their magnificent achievement and expressed the hope that the youths of Assam would be inspired by the heroic exploits of the duo and prepare themselves to attain excellence in their chosen fields.
Mridula Hazarika, Gopal Krishna Hazarika and Hemchandra Sarma presented musical items. Abani Kumar Sarma, member, finance, GSCA, disclosed that that the association had now a bank deposit of Rs 3.5 lakh. The mountaineers were honoured with sarai, japi and gamosa, and presented two cheques of Rs 5,000 each as a token of blessing from the elderly citizens.