Kieren D’Souza ran up and down Mt. Friendship - a 5289m high Himalayan peak, in a record 11 hours and 45 minutes. Hoping to set a snowball in motion, getting more Indians to the mountains and inspiring them to experience mountains differently.
Towering above Manali, the town in Himachal Pradesh where DSouza lives, he has been planning to attempt for years, the 53km round route to the Friendship peak. The mountain is about 500kms north of New Delhi. In the June of 2020, D’Souza set the Fastest Known Time (FKT) by scaling the Himalayan mountain with only boots and crampons and no other mountaineering gear. Usually, teams rope up, carry ice axes and take four to five days to reach the summit and get back to base camp.
The whole concept of FKT hasn’t really caught on here. In the mountains here, it’s very easy to get disconnected. On all the trails you get away from civilisation and it gets very remote very quickly. That is why it’s more exciting, but perhaps why it is not as accessible for so many people. If something goes wrong, you’re on your own.
Kieren hopes that other runners and mountaineers will be inspired to set their own FKT and has already received several messages from interested athletes. But more importantly, he wants to demonstrate the world of possibilities in Himalayan mountaineering.