13 Students, One Epic Climb: How These Indian Teenagers Climbed Africa’s Highest Peak

At 5,895 metres, Uhuru Peak is the highest point in Africa, rising from Kibo, the highest of Kilimanjaro’s three volcanic cones, above the Tanzanian plains. The mountain is widely regarded as the world’s highest free-standing mountain and is one of the Seven Summits, drawing tens of thousands of climbers each year, many of them first-timers. This July, 13 of those climbers were teenagers from Shiv Nadar School.

A 15-member contingent—13 students from Grades 10 to 12 across the school’s Faridabad, Noida, and Gurugram campuses, travelling with their educators—flew to Tanzania and successfully summited Kilimanjaro. The group was notably female-majority: eight girls and five boys, several of whom were competitive athletes, including national-level fencers and a national medallist in roller skating. On the mountain, medals counted for less than they expected. Kilimanjaro doesn’t measure how fast you can run. It measures whether you can keep placing one foot in front of the other through a seven-hour summit push in the dark, at an altitude where each breath delivers less than half as many oxygen molecules as it does at sea level.

Five Worlds, Eight Days, One Mountain

Mount Kilimanjaro is a volcanic massif comprising three cones: Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira. Kibo is the highest and is considered dormant, while Mawenzi and Shira are extinct.

Kilimanjaro’s defining trick is that it compresses, into a single climb, terrain that would normally take a journey from the equator to the poles. Climbing via the Lemosho route over eight days, the group moved through five ecological zones: cultivated lowlands, dense rainforest, heath and moorland, a barren alpine desert, and finally an Arctic-like summit zone of bare rock, ice and wind. Because the mountain stands alone rather than as part of a range, these transitions arrive abruptly, which is exactly why altitude sickness, not technical difficulty, is Kilimanjaro’s real hazard. A larger portion of the climb is non-technical: no ropes, no ice axes. It’s the mountain’s approachability that lures people into underestimating it.

Aashita Baid (SNS Faridabad, XII) recalled days that began at 6:30 AM with five to seven hours of hiking, camps that “became progressively more rugged” as they gained altitude, and surprisingly good food along the way. Early on, the group spotted blue monkeys and colobus monkeys in the rainforest canopy; by the higher camps, the wildlife had vanished, and the mountain felt remote. Different zones tested different students—Sana Sahrawat (SNS Gurgaon, XII) found the thinning air of the higher reaches hardest, while Reyansh Dhaneshwar (SNS Noida, XII) struggled most with the alpine desert’s swinging temperatures and its “extremely barren” horizon. Maira Sikka (SNS Faridabad, X) watched the glaciers shrink into view as she climbed—smaller than she’d expected, but still “fascinating” against the volcanic rock, with Lava Tower standing out as one of the trek’s most dramatic waypoints.

Seven Hours In The Dark

Every account of the climb converges on the same night. The team woke before midnight and began the final ascent to Uhuru Peak in total darkness, well below freezing, in winds strong enough to make each step deliberate. “I just kept reminding myself to take one step at a time,” Sahrawat said. “Reaching Uhuru Peak and watching the sunrise made all the effort completely worth it.”

For the athletes in the group, that night reframed what fitness even meant. “In the mountains, you can only be as strong as your team is,” said Tiara Aggarwal (SNS Noida, X), a school footballer. Mountaineering, she found, demanded “endurance and strength, both mental and physical,” far beyond what any single match asks of you. Individual achievement was never really the point: the group organised itself around making sure everyone moved forward together, covering for each other through exhaustion and altitude headaches, so the final push was something the whole team did.

A Three-Year Climb Before The Climb

Kilimanjaro was the final stage of a three-year mountaineering programme the school built to earn students the right to attempt it—what lead instructor Ishani Jamwal, Outbound Learning Coordinator at Shiv Nadar School, described as wanting students to “earn the mountain through progressive learning, experience and preparation.” It began in 2024 with a 4,000-metre climb of Mount Patalsu, focused on navigation and camp craft, and progressed the following year to the 5,100-metre technical Mount O, where students learned rock and ice craft, rope techniques and rappelling under experienced mountaineers, including an Everest summiteer.

Nalin Das (SNS Noida, X), who climbed Mount O, found the comparison instructive: that peak demanded jumars, crampons, and helmets, while Kilimanjaro needed only “a good pair of boots and heavy protection against the cold.” Its terrain was easier, he said, but the altitude was higher and colder, and acclimatisation mattered far more. “The climb-high, sleep-low strategy of our team leaders really helped, as none of us experienced any serious bouts of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness).”

Jamwal has led far more technical Himalayan climbs, including an attempt on the 8,188-metre Cho Oyu, where she once watched a hanging glacier detach and an avalanche sweep across Camp 1—“when we looked back, there was nothing.” Kilimanjaro tested her differently. “It doesn’t greet you with crevasses, hanging glaciers or fixed rope sections,” she said. “That’s precisely why many people underestimate it. Being a non-technical mountain does not make it an easy mountain.” Her team covered nearly 65 kilometres, much of it across loose volcanic scree “where every step forward often slid half a step back,” and watched climbers being evacuated by helicopter after their bodies failed to cope with the altitude. “No amount of enthusiasm can replace good judgement, proper acclimatisation, and the humility to recognise when it is time to descend.”

The daily rhythm followed the philosophy heard on nearly every Kilimanjaro route: pole pole (Swahili for “slowly, slowly”). Nightly health checks and frequent rest breaks tracked both physical recovery and each student’s emotional state, watching closely through summit night for the headaches, dizziness, and confusion that mark Acute Mountain Sickness.

What Athletic Ability Couldn’t Buy

“At 6,000 metres, the mountain doesn’t care how many medals you’ve won or how fast you can run,” Jamwal said. A 40-day pre-departure training block built the physical base, but she was equally deliberate about preparing students mentally, talking honestly about altitude sickness, self-doubt, and the certainty that at some point, every part of their body would tell them to stop. The students who adapted best, she found, “weren’t necessarily the fastest or the fittest. They were the ones who stayed patient, respected the pace, listened to their bodies.” On summit night, “no one asked to turn back simply because it had become difficult… that is when the mind quietly takes over. And that is where the mountain reveals character.”

Avantika Sehgal (SNS Noida, XII) described the daily discipline of layering against weather that swung from warm and humid to bitterly cold. Parth Mehta (SNS Gurgaon, XII) offered advice for future climbers: train seriously, don’t get so fixated on the summit that the journey passes unnoticed, and never be too proud to ask for help—“it’s much more rewarding when everyone reaches the summit together.” Vivaan Agarwal (SNS Noida, X) summed it up in one line: “Mental toughness counts for just as much as physical fitness.”

A Glacier, And A Warning

Kilimanjaro's glacier cover has declined dramatically since the early 20th century. Research has documented a loss of more than 80 per cent of the mountain's ice cover over roughly the past century, with some studies estimating an even greater decline depending on the period and measurement used.

Kilimanjaro's retreating glaciers have become one of the most visible symbols of climate change in Africa. Scientists have linked their long-term decline to a combination of regional climate changes, including shifts in precipitation and cloud cover, as well as warming.

For Jamwal, who has watched glaciers retreat across her own Himalayan training grounds near Manali, the sight felt personal: “I wasn’t looking at an isolated story unfolding in Africa. I was looking at the same story I had already begun to witness across the Himalayas.” Taking students into the mountains, she believes, makes that real in a way no classroom can.

Asked what she’d tell other instructors leading young climbers, Jamwal didn’t reach for a gear checklist. “Lead people before you lead the expedition,” she said. “Every student arrives on the mountain carrying something different… our role isn’t just to get the team to the summit; it’s to recognise those individual journeys and respond to them with empathy.” The line that became the expedition’s informal philosophy, repeated at every difficult moment: “You don't climb a mountain in giant leaps. You climb it one step at a time.”

By the time the group descended, the summit photograph was almost beside the point. “Quiet students emerged as leaders. Confident students learnt humility,” Jamwal said. “Every student returned with a stronger belief in themselves, not because someone told them they were capable, but because they had experienced it firsthand.”

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