Nepal: Mountain climber Babar Ali has reached the top of Mount Everest as the fifth Bangladeshi to achieve the feat. He reached the summit at around 8:45 am (BST) on Sunday, his expedition organizer Farhan Zaman confirmed citing the Base Camp team.

However, Babar Ali’s expedition has another aim. He plans to reach the top of Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain on Earth, which is next to Everest. He will descend to Camp 4 on Sunday and start his climb towards Lhotse at around midnight. If everything goes as planned, he will reach the top of Lhotse around dawn. No Bangladeshi has ever reached Lhotse before, and neither has any Bangladeshi completed two summits in the same expedition to the Himalayas. If Babar Ali succeeds tomorrow, he will achieve two new records simultaneously.

33-year-old Babar Ali has been preparing himself for years to take on this challenge. After passing the MBBS course from Chattogram Medical College, he worked as a doctor for a while. But eventually, he decided to pursue his passion in 2014. He is a founding member of Chattogram’s mountain climbers’ club “Vertical Dreamers.” He completed the basic mountaineering course from India’s Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) in 2017.