Mangalore origin boy Sathwik Karnik wins National Geographic Bee contest

Mangalore origin boy Sathwik Karnik wins National Geographic Bee contest

Mangalore Today News Network

 Washington, May 23, 2013 : Sathwik Karnik, a boy  hailing from a family having its roots in Mangalore  has won this year’s National Geographic Bee contest after gruelling rounds testing his geographic knowledge about lions in Botswana, mountain ranges in Asia and port cities in England.

National Geographic Bee is an annual geography contest sponsored by the National Geographic Society since 1989.

To clinch this title, Karnik, 12, correctly named Chimborazo as the mountain in Ecuador that represents the farthest point from the Earth’s center. Karnik  who resides with his parents at Norfolk, south of Boston, is a 7th grader at King Philip Regional Middle School.  His parents,  Rathma and Vishwanath, both of who work in the software industry, emigrated from near Mangalore  in 2002.

The national competition this time round turned out to be dominated by the Indian-Americans even as in the finals held in Washington, eight of the 10 finalists, who competed among the four million participants for the competition, were Indian-Americans.


In addition to Karnik, the third place was grabbed by Sanjeev Uppaluri, 11, fifth-grader at Fulton Sunshine Academy in Roswell, a suburb of Atlanta and the fourth place went to Virginia’s Akhil Rekulapelli, 12, seventh-grader at Stone Hill Middle School in Ashburn.

Karnik will take home  a USD 25,000 college scholarship, an all-expenses paid trip to the Galapagos Islands, and a lifetime membership to the National Geographic Society, National Geographic reported.

This is the third year in a row that a member of the Karnik family has placed in the top 10 of the National Geographic Bee.Sathwik’s brother, Karthik, took fifth place at the 2011 Bee and sixth place at the 2012 Bee.