Another New Zealander and first Sikh from country Malkiat Singh summits Mt Everest

Born in Baur village in Fatehgarh Sahib District, Singh studied in Nabha before joining Punjab Agricultural University as a BSc (Hons) agriculture student. Singh was adjudged as the best athlete for three consecutive years at the university before he pursued an MBA from the same university in 1995. A two-year professional stint saw him working for CIBA-GEIGY and ONGC before he immigrated to Auckland, New Zealand in 1998. A computer science programme for him was followed by him working as an accounts administrator in Auckland. While Singh had done some trekking in the scenic country, it was not till 2022 that he decided to plan for the summit of Mt Everest. With his elder son Mansimrat Singh, who recently joined the New Zealand Army as a commissioned officer, guiding him in the preparation for the expedition, Singh followed a strict schedule.

Malkiat Singh getting an award from Sir Edmund Hillary during his school days at Nabha.

“I was an active sportsperson in my university days in India. I was fond of trekking here in New Zealand but it was only in 2022 that I planned the Mt Everest expedition. I would follow the seven-month-long training schedule made by my elder son which involved completing 1,200 stairs every day at the local beach apart front from doing hypoxic high altitude training in local gyms with less oxygen apart from going to work. November last, I climbed the 6,119 m high Mt Lobuche in Nepal,” Singh said.

Singh arrived in Nepal on April 12 and the Everest base camp on April 20. The next few days would see him climbing Mt Lobuche once again as part of his acclimatisation before he started for the Mt Everest summit attempt from 6,065 m high camp 1. Singh had reached the 6,500 m high camp 2 on May 12 before waiting for five days at the camp due to bad weather. It was on May 18 that Singh started the summit push from 7,470 m high Camp 3 and reached 7,920 m high Camp 4 at 4 pm before attempting the final summit push for the summit at 8 pm the same night. It was at 8.37 am on May 19 that Singh hoisted the holy Nishan Sahib flag apart from the New Zealand national flag on the summit. The whole expedition cost Singh close to 1,50,000 New Zealand dollars and he sold one of his two houses for this feat.

“My wife Parminder Kaur and both sons wanted to see me achieve the feat. By god’s grace, I owned two houses in Auckland and sold one to get the money for the expedition. Five days at Camp 2 required a lot of patience and I would recite Gurbani to keep my mind and body calm,” said Singh.

The last one week saw two Mongolian climbers dying in their summit attempt of Mt Everest apart from a British climber and his sherpa going missing due to bad weather on Tuesday. Singh counts himself lucky. “One has to get lucky and I found myself lucky. We had to wait for five days first at Camp 2 and then it was a clear day on May 19. On our return, there was a snow blizzard and we could see many climbers abandoning their climbs. I hope my climb will inspire youth to dream about such feats and not to fall over bad things,” Singh added.