Members of the joint India-Nepal mountaineering expedition that successfully summited Kangchenjunga in May. - ADGPI/X via ST/ANN
KOLKATA: It was in May 1955 that a British mountaineering team successfully climbed Kangchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain at 8,586m, for the first time.
But members of this expedition did not step onto the peak of the mountain on the border of Nepal and India. They instead stopped about 1.5m short of the summit, in deference to the wishes of locals in the region, who venerate this Himalayan mountain and did not want the climbers to sully its sacred peak by stepping onto it.
