Elderly Indian couple scales Mount Kilimanjaro to create history. More details inside

Ravi Kishore Mallapragada and his wife Sowdamini created history when they climbed the world’s highest and single free-standing mountain.

What is the age of the couple?

Mr. Ravi Kishore is 61 years of age, while his wife, Mrs. Sowdamini, is 57 years old at present. The aged couple has proved to the world that age is a mere number when it comes to determination and willpower to achieve something in life.

The couple has revealed that Mr. Ravi Kishore was fascinated by hills and mountains from a very early age. His hobby as a child was climbing small hills in the city of Visakhapatnam. Gradually, it kind of became an obsession for him to conquer mountains, which is what resulted in him and his wife traversing Gilman’s Point on Mount Kilimanjaro.

At what age did Mr. Ravi start hill-climbing?

Ravi was about six years old when he began climbing hills. In his childhood, he habitually took his friends and family to the place called Dolphin's Nose, along with some other hills in the neighborhood.

What is the story of Sowdamini?

Sowdamini, on getting married to her husband, Ravi Kishore, became a travel freak. Earlier, she used to be a professor of mathematics at a college in Saudi Arabia named Yanbu Industrial College.

Currently, she is an elementary school teacher in a government-run school in Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam. She admitted that she still fears adventurous activities like climbing mountains, but she eventually started to like doing everything with her husband.

What was the motivation behind climbing Mount Kilimanjaro?

In the year 2018, when Ravi was considering his retirement, he came across a YouTuber from Andhra Pradesh who would share his mountain climbing experience on Mount Everest. This was the reignition of Ravi’s love for mountain climbing.

He mentions that the vlogger emphasizes that trekking is an easy process if one eats, sleeps, and performs well during the course. But Ravi knew it would be challenging for a person his age.



After this inspiration, the couple got admitted to RTI (Rock Training Institute) in Andhra Pradesh. In the year 2020, they decided to trek Mount Kilimanjaro. But COVID-19 put a halt to it.

He also said he didn’t want his wife, Sowdamini, to come with him on the trek, being considerate of her well-being. But she was the one who took charge of planning the trek, and both of them made it in the end.

The team that they were a part of took a total of 7 hours to reach Gilman's Point, while the couple completed their trek in 11 hours.

They said that, in spite of the extreme weather conditions, their health, age, and motion sickness, they made it.

After being questioned about any further plans to consider a Mount Everest trek, they denied having any thoughts on that. Sowdamini and Ravi are the first women and second men to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, according to the Institute of Rock Climbing. They attained this record at the ages of Ravi, 61, and Sowdamini, 57.

The couple has travelled to many countries, which include Nepal, Jordan, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Sri Lanka, the UAE, and Egypt. They love other sports, such as bungee jumping, submarine rides, scuba diving, hot air balloon rides, and paragliding.

Although they have no plans to climb Mount Everest, given their age, they have expressed that they would continue exploring places and keep doing new and exciting things.