Daily Times

Serena Hotels under its Adventure Diplomacy initiative has always been active in supporting mountaineers and other high-altitude sports in Pakistan. Serena Hotels sponsored Samina Baig, the acclaimed young female mountaineer from Pakistan for her early summits when there was little to no support available to the mountaineering community. Mr. Aziz Boolani, CEO of Serena Hotels, mentioned Samina was the start of our sponsorship of the Adventure Diplomacy Initiative and since then, we at Serena Hotels have been actively promoting different high altitude adventure sports, through different activities. Samina went on to summit the world’s top 7, starting from Mount Everest to K2, she was awarded the Pride of Performance in 2015 along with her brother Mirza Ali Baig.

Sirbaz Khan, another renowned high-altitude mountaineer who has summited 12 of fourteen of the eight-thousanders is another adventure sportsman who denotes his earlier achievements to Serena Hotels due to its patronage. He is among the very few who did so without the use of supplementary oxygen, which is an extraordinary feat.

The evening was dedicated to celebrating all the skilled mountaineers of Pakistan such as Sirbaz Khan, Sajid Sadpara, Samina Baig, Nazir Sabir, Ashraf Aman, Mirza Ali Baig, Abdul Joshi, Abdul Jabbar Bhatti, to name a few. Nazir Sabir and Ashraf Aman, veteran mountaineers shared their inspirational stories to motivate the aspiring mountaineers in attendance.

The attendees observed one minute of silence in honour of the precious lives lost in the pursuit of dreams for ‘Ali Akbar Sakhi’ who lost his life during his expedition to K2, the legendary ‘Muhammad Ali Sadpara’ and the recent loss of ‘Muhammad Hassan’.

The Nepalese Ambassador to Pakistan, H.E. Tapas Adhikari, also graced the occasion with his presence and exchanged insights with the guests as 8 of the of the Fourteen eight-thousanders are in Nepal. Also in attendance was the Canadian First Secretary for Political and Public Affairs at the High Commission of Canada, and an adventure sports enthusiast Ms. Amanda DeSadeleer.

This event was meant to showcase the immense talent of Pakistan and present those whose dreams are accomplishing the impossible with the chance to meet others who can help, inspire them to keep climbing and aiming high.