Climber Shehroze Kashif adds another feather to his cap, summits world's 4th-highest peak
Pakistan’s young mountaineer Shehroze Kashif added another feather to his cap when he successfully summitted the world’s fourth-highest peak Mount Lhotse at 8,615 metres in Nepal on Monday, becoming the youngest climber to summit the top four peaks in the world.
Twenty-year-old Kashif had started his final summit push on Sunday night and reached the top of Lhotse at around 6am PKT on Monday morning, his team confirmed.
His Lhotse summit came only 11 days after he successfully climbed the third highest peak Mount Kangchenjunga earlier this month. He is only a fourth Pakistani who has now summitted six out of 14 highest peaks of the world which are known as “eight-thousanders”.
Before him, Sirbaz Ali, Hassan Sadpara and Ali Sadpara had achieved this feat. Sirbaz has now 10 to his credit the most by a Pakistani and he is now heading towards summitting his 11th Mount Makalu. Shehroze will also follow Sirbaz to summit Makalu at 8,463 metres once he descends from Lhotse.
The Lahore based mountaineer is known as “The Broad Boy” for his achievement of summitting 8051 metres of Broad Peak at the age of 17 in 2019. He summitted K2 and Everest in 2021 at the age of 19, thus becoming the youngest to climb the top two peaks as well. In the same year, he had summitted Mount Manaslu as well.
Meanwhile, The government has received over 800 applications from adventure tourists from around the world and is expecting to welcome at least 500 mountaineers and trekkers this summer.
“So far, 22 applicants have been issued permits to visit the northern areas for adventure tourism. The visa processing
time has to be speedy to allow more foreign tourists to visit Pakistan for trekking and climbing activities,” said a source in the tourism department of Gilgit-Baltistan.
According to a senior official, in a meeting held on Saturday the concern of delay in visa processing time was raised and conveyed to all stakeholders. It was emphasised that the visa processing time should not take longer than 10 days instead of one to two months during which tourists either lose interest or change their travel plans and move to attractive destinations in other countries.
“All applications are forwarded to security agencies which give clearances before visas could be issued to trekkers and climbers planning to visit the northern areas,” said the official.
Cancellation of the first international flight to Gilgit-Baltistan on May 13 for unknown reasons was quite discouraging.
“We were looking forward to GB becoming the hub of international tourist destination,” said Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP) Secretary Karrar Haidri while talking to Dawn, adding the Skardu airport upgraded to international standards to handle the first international flight would be a major breakthrough for promotion of tourism in Pakistan.