The Night a Cave
Changed Everything
It was the 10th grade. A small group of us, barely teenagers with borrowed rucksacks and borrowed courage, started climbing Lohagad Fort as the sun disappeared behind the Sahyadris.
Nobody told us what we were walking into. We cooked in a cave — a real cave, not a campsite with a food stall nearby. We fell asleep under a sky so thick with stars it felt personal, like the universe had arranged them just for us that one night.
That night didn't just light a spark. It rewired something fundamental. The mountains stopped being scenery and became the language through which Amit Chilka would speak for the rest of his life.
By the time he left his teenage years behind, he had already climbed more forts than most people visit landmarks. The Sahyadris were his backyard. Every weekend, another ridge. Every summit, another version of himself left behind.
He Didn't Just Break Records.
He Broke His Own.
Duke's Nose. A sheer rock face jutting out over the Western Ghats, named for its resemblance to the Duke of Wellington's profile. Most people come here to look. Amit came here to build something.
Through Adventurizant — the adventure club he built within Cognizant — he mobilised hundreds of colleagues who had spent their weekdays staring at screens. He brought them to the edge. Literally.
The goal: the highest number of people rappelling and valley crossing in a single day. The kind of record that requires not just individual courage, but collective will.
4 records across 2009, 2010, and 2011 — including breaking his own record multiple times.
They entered the Limca Book of Records. Then, two years later, they came back and broke their own record. The lesson wasn't about numbers. It was about the kind of person who, having reached the top, decides the summit was only the beginning.
