Priyanka Mohite from Satara in western Maharashtra has become the first Indian woman to scale five peaks above 8,000 metres after she climbed Mount Kanchenjunga on Thursday.
Priyanka (30), the recipient of Tenzing Norgay Adventure Award 2020, successfully completed her expedition to Mount Kanchenjunga (8,586 m), the third-highest mountain on the planet, at 4.52 pm,” her brother Akash Mohite told PTI.
In April 2021, she had scaled Mt Annapurna (8,091 m), the 10th highest mountain peak in the world and had become the first Indian woman climber to achieve the feat. Priyanka has also climbed the world's highest peak Mount Everest (8,849 m) in 2013, Mount Lhotse (8,516 m) in 2018, Mount Makalu (8,485 m) and Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 m) in 2016.
Passionate about mountaineering since childhood, Priyanka started to scale mountains in the Sahyadri range of Maharashtra as a teenager and in 2012 scaled Bandarpunch, a mountain massif of the Garhwal division of the Himalayas,
in Uttarakhand. In 2015 Priyanka scaled Mt. Menthosa which at 6443 metres is the second-highest peak in the Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh. The Bengaluru-based climber is also the recipient of the Maharashtra Government's Shiv Chhatrapati State award for adventure sports for 2017-2018.