Let’s invite them to move to America to enrich us with their diversity!
But it didn’t take long for seasoned climbers to begin pointing out discrepancies in the Rathods’ story.
If nothing else, the timing didn’t seem right. “Our suspicions were first aroused owing to the time lag between the day the Rathods claimed to have reached the summit [May 23] and their [June 5] press conference announcing their achievement,” Pune-based mountaineer Surendra Shelke told the Hindu newspaper June 29.
Shelke also noted that although the Rathods were seen at the Everest base camp, no one had seem them higher up the mountain.
Questions were also raised about the photographs that the pair had taken of their trip. BuzzFeed India noted that the couple appeared to be wearing different sets of kits, right down to the boots, in these photographs. Experienced climbers said it was extremely unlikely that anyone would take along extra boots on such a difficult mission.
BuzzFeed also uncovered evidence that an image posted to Dinesh Rathod’s Facebook page (and since deleted) had been previously published on another website and did not appear to feature the couple. Satyarup Sidhantha, a climber from Bangalore, later alleged on Facebook that the couple had stolen his pictures and edited them.
