Bachendri Pal to lead ‘Mission Gange’, a Tata Steel Adventure Foundation initiative in Partnership with National Mission for Clean Ganga
~The 1500-km, 4-week expedition along the River Ganges will start from Haridwar and end in Patna~
~ The expedition will include a 40-member team~
India’s first woman to scale Mount Everest and Chief, Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TASF) Ms. Bachendri Pal, recipient of Padma Shri and Arjuna Award will lead a 40-member squad on a 1500-km, 27-day ‘Mission Gange’ rafting expedition in partnership with National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) along the river Ganga from 5 – 30 October, 2018.
The ambitious mission is aimed to create awareness at grassroots level by cleaning the river and riverfronts and educating people about waste management, clean environment and climate change. The team will start its expedition on October 5 from Haridwar traversing through Bijnor – Farukkhabad – Kanpur – Allahabad – Varanasi – Buxar and end with a drive in Patna. The expedition team will organize cleaning and awareness drives with the help of local communities, visit schools and other institutions to create awareness around waste management, climate change and Government of India’s ‘Mission Clean Ganga’ (Namami Gange).
NMCG will partner with TSAF for this important initiative, providing providing support for waste disposal, accommodation, volunteers, coordination with local authorities, NGOs and schools at various locations.
TSAF Chief and Mission Gange Expedition leader Ms. Bachendri Pal said, “Our expedition is inspired by Government of India’s Namami Gange mission, which has been a very important step towards cleaning the Ganges that has been a life-supporting river for millions in our country. The aim of our expedition is to reach out to as many people as possible, heighten the awareness around keeping this great river clean and make a movement out of the Mission that had started four years ago.”
The upcoming expedition to clean the Ganges and creating awareness around cleanliness in public and private spaces is not new to Ms Pal, one of India’s brightest national treasures.
“We are also grateful to Tata Motors for providing us a support vehicle for the entire duration of the expedition. This would be of tremendous help at all the locations where the team will set up base,” Ms Pal said.
“In 1993, the Indo-Nepalese Women’s Everest Expedition that I led voluntarily brought down 500 kgs of non-biodegradable waste from the Everest, which was then properly disposed of in Kathmandu, Nepal. Since then, this has been made mandatory for all expeditions to the Everest. Similarly, in 1994 when I led the Indian Women’s first Ganga Voyage, rafting nearly 2100 kms from Haridwar to Kolkata, apart from the hardcore ‘adventure element,’ the women brought ashore several dead bodies and buried them showing great resilience,” Ms Pal further added.
TSAF has brought together a diverse and industrious team of 40 individuals (20 women and 20 men) comprising 8 mountaineers (Bachendri Pal, Premlata Agarwal, Hemant Gupta, R S Pal, Chetna Sahoo, Binita Soren, Poonam Rana, Swarnlata Dalai) who have summited Mt. Everest, 26 Tata Steel employees, 5 engineers from Indian Institute of Technology, one radio jockey and management graduates.
In the run-up to the main expedition the team has already completed two cleaning drives at Jamshedpur, collecting more than 700 kg of Solid Waste. Team members also participated in cleanliness drive with NMCG at Kalindi Guj ghat at Delhi.
The cleaning and awareness drives will be carried out at the river ghats along the way, the details of which are as follows:
Haridwar – Oct 5-7 – Har Ki Pauri
Pandweep Ghat
Alaknanda Ghat
Kanpur – Oct 15-17 – Bithoor Ghat
Sarsaiya Ghat
Massacre Ghat
Allahabad – Oct19 -21 – Sangam Ghat
Parade Ground
Dashaswamedh Ghat
Varanasi – Oct 23 – 25-Raj Ghat
Dashaswamedh Ghat
Manikarnika Ghat
Assi Ghat
Patna – Oct 29-30 – Kali Ghat & Gai Ghat
Bhairav Ghat
Mission Gange Activities
- Cleaning Drives
- Awareness in School
- Involving Local NGOs
- Ganga Chaupal
- Knowledge sharing through social media
- Municipalities have agreed to help us with the required resources and disposal of the collected waste.
Mission Gange Team Members:
S.No. Name Gender
1 Bachendri Pal Female
2 Premlata Agrawal Female (1st Indian woman to climb 7 summits, recipient of Padma Shri and Arjuna Award)
3 Hemant Gupta Male (Everester and IIT Bomnbay Graduate)
4 R S Pal Male (Everester)
5 Chetna Sahoo Female (Everester)
6 Binita Soren Female (Everester)
7 Poonam Rana Female (Everester)
8 Swarnlata Dalai Female (Everester)
9 Nidhi Tiwari Female
10 Heena Kumari Female
11 Chitrali Sarkar Female
12 Nisha Female
13 Sneha Biswas Female
14 Amla Rawat Female
15 Anita Vaidya Female
16 Neekita Patel Female
17 Gangotri Indumati Female
18 Gudia Rani Female
19 khusboo Kumari Female
20 Stuti Bala Female
21 Sushila Mahato Female
22 Sidhi Kumari Female
23 Sushma Bissa Female
24 Harish Kumar Sharma Male
25 Mohan Rawat Male
26 Pranav Mamgain Male
27 Rahul Bahuguna Male
28 Som Mardi Male
29 Varun Sharma Male
30 Amratendu Baral Male
31 Rajesh Mallik Male
32 Deepak Kumar Sah Male
33 Arpit Sharma Male
34 Vinay Chelwani Male
35 Twesh Upadhyay Male
36 Lingaraj Nahak Male
37 Gaurav Anand Male
38 Ankit Agrahari Male
39 Rishi Kumar Male
40 Arun Pratap Singh Male
41 Nirmal Pandey Male
About Tata Steel Adventure Foundation
Founded by legendary mountaineer Ms Bachendri Pal, first Indian woman to climb Mt Everest on May 23, 1984 Tata Steel Adventure Foundation is an outbound leadership institute which through its wide range of activities aims at developing able leaders for the future through identification of their limits of mental and physical endurance. It allows people from all walks of life and all ages to choose their own metaphor for self-discovery. True to its philosophy of experimental learning, TSAF believes that no classroom is better than nature and no teacher is better than your own will.
In addition to TSAF outbound leadership program, several other courses are conducted by TSAF like horse riding, parasailing, water sports, sport climbing, rock climbing and many others. Each course is a certification course thereby giving a sense of fulfillment and achievement at the end of it.
