NOIDA teenager aspires to climb all 8000 ft mountains

His inspiration is Reinhold Messner. His ambition is to emulate his hero and climb all the 8000 ers. All mountains above 8000 ft, that is. His name - Arjun Vajpai.

Arjun is a schoolboy from Noida's Ryan International school and has climbed his second 8000 ft mountain as he became the youngest climber to go up Lhotse, the fourth highest peak in the world on Friday (20th May) morning. He already has Everest in the bag when he was the youngest to climb that mountain as well. However, that record did not last long as a 13 year old summited just a few hours after Arjun.

Going off to conquer Mt Lhotse after just having finished his Class XII board exams, Arjun is now set on a career of adventure. In winter, he wants to go on an expedition to the South Pole thus conquering the second of the three poles (the other two being the North Pole and Mt Everest).

Last year, getting sponsors for the expensive Everest expedition - that costs about $35,000 - proved tougher than summiting the peak. But the recognition Mt Everest brought him made the Lhotse ascent easier with his school, Ryan International, and two corporate houses - the Aditya Birla Group and ShivVani - coming forward to make the expedition possible.