The outdoors are exhilarating, inspiring, and even therapeutic, but unfortunately, not easily accessible to everyone. Challenging the status quo is a mission that Mumbai-based Anusha Subramanian has embarked upon. A journalist, she is a passionate mountaineer. As part of a 13-member team, she intends taking on the mighty Mt. Kilimanjaro (5895 m) in Tanzania, world’s highest free standing mountain, in what is being touted as India’s first inclusive expedition.

The climb scheduled from September 8-15 has three visually challenged adventurists — Divyanshu Ganatra and Prasad Gurav from India and Uri Basha from Israel, joining her, with the youngest sighted member being a 14-year-old from Israel. In doing so, Subramanian is also raising funds for Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation. The money raised will be utilised for taking persons with disability from low income backgrounds to the Himalayas.

Securing sponsorship for the mission was a challenge. Subramanian shares that after repeated rejections and suggestions that ranged from the bizarre to the insensitive, a salaried individual came up as a sponsor. “I approached many big corporates, but forget response, nobody even acknowledged my emails. I got response from only one MNC saying that it does not fit their cause list. I was advised by many a learned person on how I should not be taking up this mission as it is not commonly understood. But was I there not to precisely build awareness and start a dialogue? Then I was asked if my climbers were poor and had a sad story. Sadly, that is not the case too.” She says her climbers are not sad people at all. She calls them achievers in their own respect. She recalls how this individual, who does not want to be named, responded to their call for funds after reading her story in a newspaper.

She knows she can’t change stereotypes, but she can surely fight them. Subramanian is committed to the belief ‘that persons with disability can do everything that we, able bodied people, can’.
Source: https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/trends/making-the-outdoors-inclusive/645775.html