Nivetha Thomas scales Mount Kilimanjaro, is game for more expeditions
The Hindu
In an exclusive interview, actor Nivetha Thomas opens up on her first-ever mountaineering expedition
“My eyes welled up when I reached the summit. It took me three hours to hike the last 50 metres,” says actor Nivetha Thomas, who scaled Mount Kilimanjaro a few days ago. At 5895 metres above sea level, Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa, is the highest single free-standing mountain in the world. Nivetha was accompanied by Telangana mountaineer Poorna Malavath, her coach Shekhar Babu Bachinepally and 15 crew members.
Speaking from her father’s home in Dubai, where she landed after the summit, the 25-year-old actor says the seeds for the expedition were sown in September 2019, when she presented a TED talk. At the event, Nivetha listened in rapt attention as Poorna spoke about mountaineering. In 2014, at the age of 13, Poorna became the youngest Indian and the youngest female in the world to scale Mt Everest.
“I felt an unknown interest in mountaineering surging within me. Poorna and I stayed in touch and I met her coach, Shekhar. I began reading up about mountaineering,” says Nivetha.