Page 8 - AMA Summer 2024

HIGH ALTITUDE ›
for some of these great foundations, and do my best to support other military and disability charities and organisations where possible.
Further sports and adventures followed and became a catalyst to bring order to my life. The discipline and dedication I’d had growing up that was further instilled in the Gurkhas returned. I hit the gym for two hours a day for strength and conditioning and cardio work and started to find more purpose. The On Course Foundation introduced me to golf. I also competed internationally as a para-skier and even kayaked around the Isle of Wight. I found having the goal of an event helped. The call of the mountains was always there though and Everest was the ultimate ambition.
There are always politics. First, we had to move what seemed like a mountain to even attempt it. Symptomatic of the prevailing hide-them- in-a-corner attitude, in 2017 the Nepalese government had imposed a ban on people with disabilities climbing Everest. It led to some intense lobbying and visits to the United Nations in Geneva and the supreme court to get that decision overturned. In the end, five judges unanimously agreed with our point of view. It was perhaps our greatest triumph in all of this.
Climbing was already well underway at this point. We’d started with Ben Nevis, and I’d successfully completed ascents of Mont Blanc, Mount Toubkal, Chulu Far East and Mount Kilimanjaro and become the first double above-knee amputee to summit a mountain higher than 6000m when tackling Mera Peak in Nepal.
We needed to fundraise though. No Everest trip is cheap and the challenge of approaching sponsors began; one of the biggest reasons why it took six years to make the dream a reality. Though always courteous, we found that many sponsors believed it was impossible and others didn’t want to be associated with a project where the likelihood of something going wrong was high - the reputational risk was too high. But what we also found was that it just takes one with vision to understand the journey and the reason why. And then the others followed. We raised more than £500,000 and in doing so, created
Preparations (Credit: Abiral Rai)
8 ‹ ARMY MOUNTAINEER
Hari on Everest (Credit: Abiral Rai)