In the wee hours of May 9, when Havaldar Rafiq Malik stepped on top of the world''s eighth highest peak Mount Manaslu in Nepal, he created history by becoming the first Kashmiri to have climbed a mountain with height over 8,000 metres.
Malik, who is earning all round praise, is an embodiment of a positive story as he escaped the lure of joining militancy in early 1990s and instead joined the army.
Hailing from a village near Anantnag district, about 60 km south of Srinagar, Malik was determined to do "something big" for which he had joined the army in 1995, following in the steps of his father and uncles.
In fact, he joined the army "discreetly" and kept it a secret even from his fellow villagers for over a year.
"As the trend was in those days, many of my classmates at our school in Khanabal joined ranks with the terrorists, who used to frequently visit our school to take us across the Line of Control (LoC) to pick up arms," Malik told PTI.
"My decision to join the army remained a secret for over a-year-and-a-half and people in my village came to know about it only when government officials reached there for verifying my credentials," he said.
Soon after completing his training, Malik realised his love for mountains and did a course from the elite High Altitude Warfare School in Gulmarg and then from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, where he stood first in all courses.
