2

Hope Is God

I’d been inspired to scale all fourteen of the world’s biggest peaks at a crazy speed and hoped to top the Nepalese epics of Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Kanchenjunga, Everest, Lhotse, Makalu and Manaslu; to race up Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I and II, K2 and Broad Peak in Pakistan; and finally, to conquer Tibet’s intimidating 8,000-ers – Cho Oyu (which was also accessed from Nepal) and Shishapangma. But why? These were some of the most inhospitable places on the planet and a challenge of that kind, one with a deadline of only half a year or so, might have sounded like madness to most people. But to me it presented an opportunity to prove to the world that everything, anything, was possible if an individual dedicated their heart and mind to a plan.

Who cared how dangerous it was?

The adventure had first started with Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak and an epic Himalayan monument within my homeland. To people outside the small, landlocked country of Nepal, Everest carries a near mythical quality. But as a kid, it had felt like a distant entity. My family was poor; the trek from where we lived to Everest and back was expensive, even for locals, and the journey took around twelve days. It also required a traveller to stay overnight in a series of teahouses – small hotels in the villages that lined the route – and so I never experienced the adventure.

Once I moved to England in 2003, as a young Gurkha soldier serving with the British Armed Forces, people always asked the same question: ‘So what’s Everest like?’ Mates unfamiliar with Nepal’s geography imagined that the mountain had probably loomed majestically outside my back garden. They looked unimpressed when I admitted I’d not even seen Base Camp, let alone climbed above it. My strength as a fighter was questioned afterwards.

‘It’s on your doorstep, mate, and you haven’t bothered? And we thought Gurkhas were tough . . .’

After ten years, the joking and sniping finally got to me.

OK. I’ll start climbing. It’s time.

I took my first steps towards the highest place on earth in December 2012, when I made the trek to the foot of Everest’s intimidating peak at the age of twenty-nine years old. By that point I had progressed from the Gurkha regiment and into the military elite, and through a mate, I’d been connected with the famous Nepalese mountaineer Dorje Khatri, who offered to guide me to Base Camp on a trek that was set to last several days. Dorje had scaled Everest several times and was a champion for the SherpaFN1 guide: he defended their rights and campaigned for better pay, but he was also a climate-change activist and tried to alter the way everybody viewed the Himalayas’ fragile ecosystem.

I couldn’t think of a better person with whom to make the journey. But having stared up at Everest’s peak as it loomed 8,848 metres above us, I decided that trekking wasn’t enough and I couldn’t care less about the risks. It was time to go higher.

After a fair amount of persuasion, I convinced Dorje to teach me some of the skills I’d need to climb an 8,000-er. At first, I begged him to let me attempt Ama Dablam, a nearby peak that towered 6,812 metres above sea level, but Dorje laughed off my idea.

‘Nims, that is a very technical mountain,’ he said. ‘People who have climbed Everest even struggle to get to the top.’

Instead we travelled to the nearby peak, Lobuche East, picking up some rental equipment in a nearby village before trekking to the summit. The work was slow, but steady, and under Dorje’s tutelage, I pulled on a pair of crampons for the very first time, walking across a grass slope and feeling the bite of their steel points in the turf. The sensation was weird, but it gave me an idea of what I might experience during a proper mountain ascent and as we slowly worked our way to the top, into the nipping cold and powerful winds, I felt the expedition buzz for the very first time.

Each step caused me to pause and overthink – every now and then I’d experience a surge of fear; sometimes falling to my death seemed like a very real possibility. But having wasted so much energy stressing, I eventually located the confidence to stride forward purposefully, without anxiety.

Once at the summit, I was blown away by the view around me: the jagged Himalayan vista had been shrouded by a blanket of cloud, but here and there, a peak poked through the grey mist. I felt my adrenaline soaring as Dorje pointed to Everest, Lhotse and Makalu. A sense of pride washed over me, but there was a feeling of anticipation as well. I’d already decided to climb those three peaks in the distance, even though I could be considered a late starter in high-altitude mountaineering terms.

I wanted more. Around that time, I’d caught wind of some exciting intel: in 2015, the Brigade of Gurkhas – the collective term for Nepal’s Gurkha fighting forces – were marking two centuries of service with the British military in a celebration called the G200. A series of prestigious events were being arranged, among them a memorial service at the Gurkha statue in London, a reception at the Houses of Parliament and a Field of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall. But buried within the packed cultural programme was mention of an expedition to Everest.

The Gurkhas had previously built a reputation as being sturdy climbers, but because of the high turnover of war and the regiment’s recent deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, no serving Gurkha soldier had ever made it to the top. (It was also really expensive for Nepalese people to climb Everest, even with some of the discounts afforded to local residents.) That was all set to change when an ambitious plan was announced to take a dozen or so Gurkhas to Everest’s peak, via the South Col route, as part of the bi-centennial celebrations.

The mission, called the G200 Expedition (G200E), was set to be both challenging and history-making. Even better, as a serving Gurkha in the UK Special Forces, I was eligible to climb. I was proud of the regiment, I’d do anything to further their standing, and this felt like an honourable cause.

I sharpened my skills and increased my ambition. An advantage of being part of the British military was that I had access to a variety of highly specialised courses. I applied for one which taught soldiers the art of extreme cold-weather warfare until I was able to become a part of that unique cadre of mountain warfare specialists. Then I climbed Denali, the highest peak in the USA and one of the Seven Summits, a group featuring the highest mountain on each continent comprising Denali, plus Everest (Asia), Elbrus (Europe), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Vinson (Antarctica), Aconcagua (South America), and Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania).

A 6,190-metres climb, Denali was no joke. Isolated and brutally cold, the temperatures there sometimes dropped to -50°C, which was a serious problem for the novice climber like me, but Denali was also the perfect training ground. I learned rope skills and put my Special Forces-forged endurance to good use, dragging my sleigh through the thick snow for hours on end, taking care not to fall into one of the many crevasses on the mountain.

Then in 2014, I climbed my first Death Zone peak. Dhaulagiri was a beast. Nicknamed the White Mountain, because of the deep powder smothering its steep and intimidating inclines, it was also regarded as one of the most dangerous expeditions in the world, thanks to a terrifying kill rate. At the time, over eighty climbers had died there and its South Face was yet to be scaled, even though the likes of Reinhold Messner, the first mountaineer to climb Everest solo, had attempted what was an apparently impenetrable route.

Its biggest danger was the risk of avalanches, which erupted from nowhere, sucking everybody and everything away in their path. In 1969, five Americans and two Sherpas were swiped from the mountain. Six years later, six members of a Japanese expedition were killed when a wall of snow buried them alive. Dhaulagiri wasn’t an adventure to be taken lightly, especially for a climber with only eighteen months’ experience and limited knowledge of the gnarly conditions found on extreme peaks. But eager to improve my climbing skills whenever I was granted leave from fighting in Afghanistan, I decided I was going up.

A brother from the Special Air Service (SAS), a wing of the British Special Forces – let’s call him James for the purposes of secrecy – accompanied me for the trip. Neither of us looked the part, having arrived in Base Camp wearing flip-flops, shorts and Ray-Ban sunglasses. Our arrival was also poorly timed. We were joining up with a larger expedition who had been acclimatising to the conditions and thin air for a month. An avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall had curtailed their trip to Everest and so they’d moved across to Dhaulagiri to climb there instead.

The pair of us were behind schedule because of our limited leave with the military, so there was no way for us to enjoy the usual procedures afforded to mountaineers hoping to function at high altitude, such as acclimatisation rotations.FN2 Meanwhile, our climbing buddies looked to be the real deal, having already arrived in the region and settled in, and when we all set off for the trek to Base Camp, we soon fell behind. James was really struggling with the altitude. It took us three days longer than the others to complete the journey.

‘What do you guys do?’ asked one bloke later. He’d taken an interest in our appearance when we’d first arrived. I knew what he was thinking. Either we were fearless mavericks, or loose cannons to be avoided at all costs during a sketchy summit push.

I shrugged. There was no way either of us was about to reveal our full military roles, especially as we were bound to certain levels of secrecy. Also, both of us liked the idea of being judged on any mountaineering skills we might have possessed, rather than our elite combat expertise.

‘Oh, we’re in the military,’ I said eventually, hoping for an end to the questions.

The climber raised an eyebrow quizzically. Our travelling kit looked fairly piecemeal, although the climbing equipment James and I had brought along was of high quality. Even so, our expedition mates wrote us off as clueless tourists. I suppose the assumption was half-right, but I wasn’t going to let anyone pick holes in my weaknesses, and at Base Camp we prepared enthusiastically for our first acclimatisation rotations. Over the coming week, our plan was to climb daily to Camps 1 and 2 of four outposts that lined the route to the peak. We’d then sleep lower down the mountain, until we felt ready for our summit push.

As soon as we’d kitted up and begun our first acclimatisation ascent, it was clear that James didn’t possess the same physiology as me. It had first become apparent on our base-camp trek, but once we started the serious business of climbing on our first rotation to Camp 1, he was unable to maintain the pace as I pushed ahead. Altitude sickness was breaking him up and I realised he was struggling once we’d stopped to rest at Camp 1 during our first rotation.

As I surged onwards the next day, James fell behind again, even though a Sherpa was helping him with most of his equipment and I’d been lugging around thirty kilos on my own. Not that I could afford to be cocky. Before too long, I’d also blown myself out. In a rush of madness, I’d wanted to show off my speed, but I pushed too far ahead, and as I rested at Camp 1 for a couple of hours, brewing a cup of hot tea, my small party yet to arrive, a horrible thought struck me.

Was James still alive?

As well as regularly trembling with avalanches, Dhaulagiri was known for its deep crevasses. Unseen, there was every chance James and his Sherpa might have tumbled into one. If that was the case, it was unlikely they’d be discovered for days, if at all. In a slight panic, I packed up my pot and cup and headed down towards Base Camp to find them. (I’d learned very early on not to leave my kit anywhere on the mountain; it was best to keep everything with me at all times, just in case.)

It didn’t take long. Two people were moving slowly below me. It soon turned out to be my climbing party, but James was in a worse state than before.

‘This is a big mountain, brother,’ I said, having greeted them. ‘You’re struggling with acclimatisation, let me take that backpack for you.’

I reached out to lighten his load, but James seemed hesitant. He didn’t want to give in to pain, but I was insistent. When fighting through warzones with the Special Forces, an attitude of that kind would have been considered commendable. On a mountain as dangerous as Dhaulagiri, it was an act of suicide.

‘Listen, forget your ego,’ I said. ‘If you want to summit, let me help you.’

James relented. Slowly but steadily, we worked our way back up to Camp 1, but the work had taken its toll on me, too. I’d overreached and the mountains were delivering their first major lesson: Never burn yourself out unnecessarily. From then on, I promised not to waste vital energy; I would work hard only when I needed to. When the time arrived to make my first-ever 8,000-metre summit push a few days later, I made sure to hang at the back of the leading group as we snaked our way from Base Camp to the peak of Dhaulagiri, partly out of respect for the several Sherpas leading us to the top, but also because I’d never climbed such a huge mountain before and I didn’t want to experience another energy slump.

That’s when I noticed the ever-changing work of the guides within an expedition party. Every now and then, the leading Sherpa would take a break from making a path through the waist-high drifts with his footsteps, allowing one of his teammates to take over for a while. He would then fall to the back of the line until it was his turn to head the charge once more, while the rest of us matched his prints in the snow, which made for fairly easy work. This was a technique I would come to know as trailblazing and with his selfless industry, the lead Sherpa was helping the expedition party to follow a much smoother route upwards. I respected the effort that every guide was making.

When it came to trailblazing, there were two techniques to learn.FN3 The first was applicable to shin- to knee-deep snow: in those conditions a climber had to make footfalls by lifting their knee to their chest with every step, then planting their foot firmly. The second was for more extreme conditions when the powder was thigh- or waist-high. In those cases, the leading individual had to push forward with their hips, creating a pocket of space before lifting their leg out and rolling the hip over in order to make the next step.

Suddenly, a bloke in front of me stepped out of the line and started his way to the front of the pack to help.

I shouted up at him. ‘Hey, bro! What are you doing? The Sherpas aren’t going to get upset, are they?’

He waved me away. ‘No man, I’m doing my bit, helping the Sherpa brothers . . .’

I’d assumed that leading the group in such a way was disrespectful to the expedition guides; it looked as if someone else was trying to play the hero, which I’d previously believed was a dangerous step on such a risky mountain. It turned out I was wrong and another Sherpa soon put my mind at rest.

‘Nims, the snow is so deep. If you have the energy and can help out up front too, please do . . .’

Encouraged, I later took the lead and drove forwards. My legs lifted and pushed like pistons as I lifted my feet out of the powder. The work was huge, but by regarding every forward step as a sign of significant progress, and part of some greater team effort, I was able to move steadily. My thighs and calves ached with the endeavour, but my lungs were light. The fatigue that hindered even the most athletic individuals at altitude didn’t seem to be striking me down. I was strong. Boom! Boom! Boom! Every step arrived with power. When I turned back to see how far I’d come, I was shocked to notice the rest of my climbing party. They were little black dots below.

Wow, this is my shit, I thought, admiring the deep footfalls I’d left for the expedition. I’d been working without too much thought, operating in the flow state that athletes mention whenever they break world records, or win championships. I was in the zone.

Cautious not to overextend myself like before, I worked my way slowly to the next ridgeline, waiting an hour until the remainder of the group had caught up. When they later gathered around me, the lead Sherpa guide shouted excitedly and slapped me on the back. Other blokes in the expedition, climbers who had looked down on me a few days earlier having written off my chances of summiting, were now shaking my hand.

Everyone seemed relieved that I’d put in some serious legwork and my industry totally changed the attitude of everyone within the team. I wasn’t a tourist any more. My mindset had shifted, too. By the time I reached the peak, having trailblazed over 70 per cent of the route, I was not only surprised at what I’d achieved, but emboldened.

‘Brother,’ I thought. ‘You’re a badass at high altitude.’

* * *

I hadn’t been primed genetically for any success in the Death Zone and climbing certainly wasn’t a facet of my family life. When I was a kid, I wanted to be one of two things. My first option: to serve as a Gurkha soldier, like my dad, because around the world they were considered to be an utterly fearless military force. As a fighting unit, they had been spread historically between the Nepalese, British and Indian armies, as well as the Singapore police; although everybody within their ranks originated in Nepal, and was considered to be an elite fighter, big on heart and loyalty, with an unswerving belief in Queen and country.

Enough history books have been written about their inception, should you want to go there, but here’s the briefest of backstories. During the Anglo–Nepalese War (1814–16) between Nepal, then known as the Gorkha Kingdom, and the British East India Company (or EIC, a private army, which was double the size of the regular British Army), the skills of the Nepali fighters were so admired that any defectors turning to the EIC for work following a treaty agreement were employed as ‘irregular forces’.

The Gurkhas later became a highly respected regiment in their own right, and were deployed in the Second World War, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan during the War on Terror. Two of my older brothers, Ganga and Kamal, had followed the same path as Dad, and whenever they returned to Nepal on leave, people looked at them in awe as if they were rock stars. The Gurkha soldier was legendary and their motto, Better to Die Than to Be a Coward, conjured up images of heroism. That was only enhanced by stories of successful war missions and against-all-odds adventure.

My second career ambition was to be a government official – but I wanted to be Nepal’s version of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. The country I grew up in was very small and the man on the street had been disenfranchised for too long; even as a kid I understood that the people around me had very little and the poverty rates were incredibly high there. Many Nepalese citizens were Hindus and despite their lack of wealth they would often give their money to the temple whenever they visited.

Not me. If I ever had money, I was happier emptying my wallet to the person in the street, the homeless, the blind and the disabled outside the temple. I’d do the same on a bus, where buskers would often play, unable to work because a terrible injury or a debilitating illness had left them incapacitated.

Every donation arrived with a contract: This is for you, brother, but don’t spend it on alcohol. Make sure your family gets the food it needs. I’ve always been that way. Money never attracted me, but as a kid, I dreamed of taking a job in authority, one with a uniform. Not because I wanted power or status, but because I liked the idea of draining money from Nepal’s super-rich, especially those who were corrupt as fuck anyway, before handing the spoils down to the people with nothing.

This attitude probably isn’t surprising, seeing as I was broke from the beginning, born on 25 July 1983 in a village called Dana, in the Myagdi district in western Nepal. The small outpost is positioned around 1,600 metres above sea level, so it wasn’t as if I’d been raised with crampons attached to my feet and a physiological connection to high altitude. Dhaulagiri was the biggest mountain in that region, but it was still a long way from my front door and it would have required some serious effort to get there.

There was a gap of around eighteen years between myself and my older brothers, Ganga, Jit and Kamal and was followed by my younger sister, Anita. We were a loving family; we didn’t have any money and the thought of running a car was unimaginable, but I was a happy kid. It didn’t take a lot to keep me amused.

By all accounts, Mum and Dad had been up against it from long before I was born. Their problems first began after they married from different castes, or classes. It wasn’t the done thing in Nepal and their families became resentful of the union. They were soon cut adrift from their parents and siblings, which meant they had to start their new lives together with next to nothing.

Dad was serving with the Indian Gurkha regiment at the time, but his salary alone wasn’t enough to support the family, so when Ganga, Jit and Kamal were born, Mum started working on the village farm for money. Most of the time, at least one of the kids was strapped to her back in a cloth. The workload of caring for a young family while bringing money home through hard labour must have been exhausting, but she didn’t quit, and a lot of my work ethic came from my mother – she was a huge influence on me, as she was for a lot of people who would go on to meet her.

Mum had not been educated, which must have annoyed her, because she would develop a vision for how to help other women in the area and eventually became an activist in Nepal, where she worked to change the attitudes towards gender and education. This wasn’t the norm in Nepal back then, but Mum fought for what she believed in and most weeks she earned barely enough to put food on the table. The family still survived, though. Later, once my brothers were old enough, they were put to work too, and it would be their job to wake at 5 a.m., before walking for two hours to find and cut grass for the family’s three buffaloes. They then travelled to school for a full day of classes.

I had it a little easier. Our garden held several orange trees and once the fruit had ripened in autumn, I’d climb into the branches and shake the limbs until they were empty. The ground was soon covered in fruit and I’d eat my way through the lot until I was full. The following day, I’d scoop up more spoils and repeat the feast. But when I was four years old, the family moved to another village in the jungle called Ramnagar, which was located in Chitwan, 227 miles away from Dana, and set in the hottest and flattest part of the country. My parents had become worried about the number of landslides that threatened Dana, where several fast-flowing rivers had the tendency to flood and wreak havoc.

Not that I cared about the relocation. With the jungle on our doorstep, Mum would go into the undergrowth to grab wood for the fire, while I had plenty of trouble to find: on the streets, in the woods, by the water – the potential for exploration was huge.

From an early age I’d learned it was fairly easy for me to thrive emotionally on the bare minimum, which might go some way to explaining how I was later able to live most of my life within the chaos of combat, or in a tent pinned to the side of a mountain. My mum was very strict, but on weekends, when I wasn’t at school, she was happy for me to explore Ramnagar alone. Most of the time I headed for the nearby river, hanging out on the banks from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., killing hours by hunting for crabs and prawns. I was happiest in nature; adventure seemed to be everywhere, though Mum often turned her nose up whenever I proudly brought back my catch for her to examine.

‘Why have you brought me insects?’ she’d complain.

Life would soon improve. When my brothers went off to join the Gurkhas, they explained that it was their hope to help me towards a better life. Every month, a chunk of their wages was sent home, a gift to fund my education at Small Heaven Higher Secondary – an English-speaking boarding school in Chitwan – and once I was around five years old, I was packed away. This was a serious luxury, though it wasn’t finite, and Mum often mentioned the temporary nature of my brothers’ generosity.

‘One day they are going to be married,’ she would say. ‘They’ll have families of their own to look after and they won’t be able to support your education any more.’

But even as a young kid, I already had a plan in mind to support the family. ‘Look, it’s fine,’ I told Mum, attempting to shrug off any pressure. ‘I’ll pass my exams when I’m older and then I’ll become a teacher at the school, or even a nursery. Then I’ll be able to look after you.’

But really, I wanted to be a Gurkha.

I certainly possessed the minerals to cut it in the military. Despite the fact that I was only five years old when I first started at boarding school, the rhythm of a life away from home seemed to suit me. Everybody slept in a hostel, where the older kids held the power and the teachers beat the children if they ever stepped out of line. It was my first challenge, I had to learn how to survive in such a tough environment – and quickly.

As I grew older, negotiating the daily battle in the playground became a tricky experience. Sure, I was tough for my age, but there were plenty of older kids to deal with and if ever Mum came to visit and brought food or supplies with her, one of the senior school bullies often came knocking once she’d returned home. Sometimes my food was snatched away and there was nothing I could do about it.

My first survival instinct was to run off, sprinting into the trees before anyone had the chance to rob me. I was fast; I showed plenty of stamina and enjoyed myself during track and field events in PE. But my second survival instinct when dealing with the school bullies was to fight back. As I developed and matured, I became stronger, much stronger, and once my teens had arrived, I decided to take up kickboxing. I soon learned how to defend myself, breaking down competitors until I made it to the status of regional champ.

By the time I was entered into year nine at school, I’d suffered only one defeat, to Nepal’s national champion, and he was several years older than me. Whenever a school bully came for my food supplies, I stood up to the threats, and then smashed him. Very few kids challenged me after that. Kickboxing had been my first step towards becoming a man.

My next was to apply for the Gurkhas.