Kaamya Karthikeyan, the 17-year-old mountaineering prodigy, always has a charming, endearing smile. She maintains the smile while scaling heights that even the fittest of 'elders' would be brooding over.

The newest sensation to emerge from the country, the 17-year-old Kaamya Karthikeyan from Mumbai has become the youngest person in the world to conquer the highest peaks in all seven continents. 

The icing on the cake happened when she unfurled the national tri-colour atop the highest peak of Antarctica on 24th December last year. She already had touched the pinnacle of Mt. Everest (Asia) in May last year from the Nepal side.

Kaamya, speaking to LiveMint revealed, “I am an NCC cadet. It is truly an honour and I hope to have an interesting and inspiring interaction with our Hon'ble President.”

Kaamya is studying in the seventh standard of the Navy Children School, Mumbai. She said, “I touched both these peaks with my dad beside me. I think it was really special to have climbed these peaks with my parents. My mom climbed three of the seven summits with me, while my dad and I climbed the others together. There cannot be better climbing partners for me.”

On the feeling after accomplishing the record seventh summit, she recalled, “I think, while nearing the Mt. Vinson summit, I was just reflecting on the hard work we all had put in. I was thankful that the mountain allowed us to go atop. It was a momentous day!"

Explaining the intensity of climbing Kaamya said that the climbs on Everest and Vinson were very different from one other in many ways. She added that they had spent nearly two months on the mountain at Everest. The achievement marked the feelings of a dream that Kaamya had been nurturing for the last seven years. 

By the age of 11, Kaamya Karthikeyan had summated Mt Kosciusko (7,310 ft), the highest peak in Australia in 2018 after she had already become the second youngest girl in Asia to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa (18,652 ft) in 2017, and the youngest girl in the world to ski down the summit of Mt Elbrus in Europe (18,510 ft) in 2018.

This apart, in 2017, she trekked the Everest Base Camp (17,600 ft) in Nepal and climbed Mt Stok Kangri (20,082 ft) in Leh.