Havaldar Malik -- First Kashmiri to climb peak above 8,000 m

Ajit K Dubey
New Delhi, Jul 3 (PTI) In the wee hours of May 9, when
Havaldar Rafiq Malik stepped on top of the world's eighth
highest peak Mount Manaslu in Nepal, he created history by
becoming the first Kashmiri to have climbed a mountain with
height over 8,000 metres.
Malik, who is earning all round praise, is an embodiment
of a positive story as he escaped the lure of joining
militancy in early 1990s and instead joined the army.
Hailing from a village near Anantnag district, about 60
km south of Srinagar in the north Indian state Jammu and
Kashmir, Malik was determined to do "something big" for which
he had joined the army in 1995, following in the steps of his
father and uncles.
In fact, he joined the army "discreetly" and kept it a
secret even from his fellow villagers for over a year.
"As the trend was in those days, many of my classmates
at our school in Khanabal joined ranks with the terrorists,
who used to frequently visit our school to take us across the
Line of Control (LoC) to pick up arms," Malik told PTI.
"My decision to join the army remained a secret for over
a-year-and-a-half and people in my village came to know about
it only when government officials reached there for verifying
my credentials," he said.
Soon after completing his training, Malik realised his
love for mountains and did a course from the elite High
Altitude Warfare School in Gulmarg and then from the Himalayan
Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, where he stood first
in all courses.