SPORTS · ANDHRA PRADESH

The boy who started climbing at five

R Surya Prasad of Anantapur began mountaineering training at five, and his official award profile credits him with scaling Mount Kilimanjaro at seven or eight — work honoured with the Bal Puraskar at nine.

By The Young Achievers2 min readSources checked 23 October 2026

✓ Verified · Age 9

R Surya Prasad · Nine in January 2024 (official sources); date of birth not published

Filed under: Sports · Andhra Pradesh · Mountaineering

R Surya Prasad in full snow gear holding the Indian flag during his high-altitude mountaineering training

R Surya Prasad holding the Indian flag in the snow — the press photograph circulated with his award coverage; it is not a Kilimanjaro summit photograph · Photograph: The New Indian Express · Image source ↗

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The achievement

R Surya Prasad was nine years old in January 2024 when he received the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in the Sports category — the only recipient from Andhra Pradesh among the 19 children honoured that year. Surya is from Anantapur and studies at APRS in Kodigenahalli village, Sri Sathya Sai district, where he was in Class 5 when the award was announced.

His father Shiva Prasad is a farmer and his mother Pramila a homemaker. His coach, Purushottam of Dharmavaram, says that after noticing the boy’s interest in climbing, his parents had him trained first near Bhuvanagiri, then at Gandikota, and later in Ladakh.

Kilimanjaro

His formal mountaineering training began at the age of five. According to his official award profile, on 5 April 2022 he scaled Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania — at 5,895 metres the highest mountain in Africa — and displayed images of eminent figures at the summit as a gesture towards social empowerment.

From rock faces near home to the roof of Africa is a long road for any climber, let alone a primary-school student.

✳ A spark to explore

If you had to train for years towards one big goal, what would you choose — and who would you want in your corner? That is a question from us, not part of his record.