Suryakant Jena

Bhubaneswar: He has high hopes to achieve greatness and burning desire to make everyone proud. Nilachal Parida, a taxi driver who lives a simple life with his widowed mother and sister in a single room near Delta square in Bhubaneswar has aspiration of doing something big and for that he wants to conquer world's highest peaks.

Not only for the sake of records, Nilachal also has an ardent passion to promote the culture and tradition of Odisha through his mountaineering.

On his passion for mountain climbing, Nilachal says he lost his father at a very tender age but it propelled him to dream something big in his life. He has been pursuing the dream of conquering world’s tallest mountains ever since.
After training at various mountaineering schools and undergoing myriad official procedures, Nilachal is on course to begin the expeditions of his life. He is also imparting training and adventure sports to budding mountaineers and climbers with the help of his Go Indian Adventure organization.

He has already received the approval from the government to trek the Mount Everest in the Himalayas, Aconcagua in Argentina, Mount Denali in North America, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Elbrus in Europe, Mount Vinson Massif and Mount Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia.

“I have been actively training and climbing mountains since I was studying in class 8th. Now I am driving taxi and also into mountaineering. I have already received invitations for trekking on several designated peaks across the world,” said Nilachal.

What is praiseworthy is that Nilachal has named his expeditions after the names of some of the great personalities like APJ Abdul Kalam, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Biju Patnaik, Buxi Jagabandhu and Jayi Rajguru.

However, financial crunch has posed a threat to Nilachal’s dreams. Hoping to get some support, he has now sought help from the State government.

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