A local teenager has become a true globetrotter.
Plano resident Saanvi Mylavarapu has traveled all over the world and hiked a total of more than 1,000 miles since she first learned to appreciate hiking as a young child.
“It’s really my mom that really got us into hiking because she fell in love with hiking at a national park and ever since then we visited over 25 national parks in the U.S.,” the 16-year-old said, according to CBS News Texas.
She visited her first national park, Mammoth Caves National Park in Kentucky, when she was six years old. She has since visited other U.S. parks, such as Grand Tetons National Park and Yosemite National Park, walking hundreds of miles on trails.
“I really started growing my passion [for] being outdoors and finding that time for myself,” she told CBS News.
Mylavarapu’s most recent journey took her and her mother across three nations on the Tour Du Mont Blanc.
The hiking trail tracks through France, Italy, and Switzerland and is Europe’s highest trail at an elevation of about 6 miles. It encompasses about 106 miles of hiking and takes about 10 days to complete, according to Autour du Mont-Blanc.
Mylavarapu told CBS News that she had already hiked similar trails and that the repetition gave her the “mental strength” to carry out the hike.
“It was really exciting and especially [since] I got to do it with my mom,” said Mylavarapu. “It was like mother-daughter backpacking around Europe.”
In completing the trail, Mylavarapu reached a huge milestone of hiking over a thousand miles.
Mylavarapu said that her hikes not only allow her to see the world but also permit her to focus on her mental and physical growth while getting a reprieve from the “distractions of … normal life.”
As a National Park Trust student ambassador, Mylavarapu aspires to encourage others to visit national parks and engage in conservation efforts.
“I am on a mission to encourage people to go out and explore nature,” said Mylavarapu, according to National Park Trust. “Earth went through several transformations over 4.5 billion years and in our lifetime let’s try to seek, learn, explore, and enjoy the beauty of nature — the air, Sun, different water bodies, landscapes, mountains, valleys, canyons, various seasons and the list is endless.”
Mylavarapu hopes to continue trekking across the world, hiking more trails in the future.
