By B Shrikant

Mumbai, Oct 1 (IANS): In between conquering mountain peaks, India's Everest Twins, Tashi, and Nungshi Malik, also harbour an Olympic dream. They want to select very young girls from across India and train them in sports climbing so that one day they can win a medal for India at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Sports climbing is a medal sport at the Olympics, introduced in Tokyo 2020.

'Mission Women Olympic Climbing Medal Hunt' is a dream very close to the heart for Tashi and Nungshi Malik, the first female twins to climb Mount Everest (in 2013) and the first siblings and twins to climb the Seven Summits and reach the North and South Poles and complete the Adventurers Grand Slam and Three Poles Challenge.

As part of their pet project, the twins want to select very young girls from across India through regional wall climbing competitions and train them at Outdoor Leadership School for an Olympic medal in 2028. They are hoping to soon arrange funds through sponsorships to launch this programme as part of their foundation

The twins, winners of India's highest adventure honour 'Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award' 2015 by the President of India on August 29, 2016, and awarded the Leif Erikson Young Explorers Award in Iceland by president Guoni Th. Johannesson in 2019, themselves are too old to take up sports climbing as they are already 30-years old.

"It is always better to get into sports climbing when you are young so that you develop and strengthen the required set of muscles early on. It is very encouraging to have sports climbing included as an Olympic sport with three medals up for grabs! In India, we still have a long way to go to be considered serious contenders for this honour," they told IANS in an interview.

Tashi and Nungshi also want to launch a few adventure-reality shows in India and annually lead all women Everest and Kanchenjunga base camp leadership treks for women. They want to produce and anchor a video series called Invisible Mountains to showcase how subtle and often invisible socio-cultural practices based on gender limit girls.

"It will first cover states, societies, and sub societies in India and then cover all Continents," they said.