Haryana Guv honours 2 TS women who scaled virgin peak in Ladakh

Hyderabad: Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatraya on 28 August honored Dr. Kavya Manyapu and Poorna Malavath of Kamareddy district in Telangana who successfully climbed a virgin peak – an unclimbed mountain – at an altitude of 6,012 meters on Independence Day 2022 in Ladakh.

"Dr. Kavya and Poorna have made us proud. I am extremely glad to see our boys and girls doing so well in different fields and bringing laurels to the state and the country. They should work hard to scale greater heights of glory," said Mr. Dattatraya.

The team, the first of 'Project Shakthi', successfully completed the expedition in 12 days.

"Our first expedition to this unclimbed peak is a testament that every girl has the power to change the world. And this is what we want to help every girl realise through Project Shakthi," said Dr. Kavya.

Poorna added, "This is only the beginning. We want to expand our reach to help empower, educate, and elevate girls across India."

Kavya K. Manyapu is an Indian–American aerospace engineer and scientist. She currently works at NASA in the extravehicular branch for lunar exploration missions (Artemis program) within the flight operations directorate at JSC. She was part of the Boeing team for nearly 10 years that developed the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. She developed a fabric for self-cleaning space suits that uses carbon nanotubes to repel dust for use in future lunar and Mars missions.

Malavath Poorna is an Indian mountaineer. On 25 May 2014, Poorna scaled the highest peak of Mount Everest and, aged 13 years and 11 months, became the youngest Indian and the youngest female in the world to have reached the summit. She scaled Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Russia and in Europe, on 27 July 2017. After reaching the summit of Elbrus, Poorna unfurled a 50 ft long Indian Tricolor singing the Indian national anthem.