Hello, I am Dal Bahadur. I want to say a big thank you to Phadera Worldwide for letting me share my story. When I first reached the bottom of Mount Everest, I knew I was going to face a huge challenge. Even though I trained hard and prepared for years, I wasn’t ready for how tough it would be. The mountain looked so big and powerful, it almost felt like it was laughing at me. As I walked closer to Base Camp, I realized how strong Everest really is. I learned that climbing it wasn’t just about being physically strong it was also about fighting my own fears and limits.
The Struggle with Altitude Sickness
The higher I went, the harder it was to breathe. At first, it was small things my legs felt heavier, my breaths were shorter, and I felt a little dizzy. But as we climbed past 3,000 meters, then 4,000 meters, it got much worse. I started feeling sick, had bad headaches, and was always tired. I thought I could handle it, but every day, it just got worse.
When I got to 5,500 meters, it felt like my lungs were burning, and my head was full of pain. They told me it was altitude sickness, which almost everyone gets on Everest. But knowing that didn’t make it better. I took Diamox, a medicine for altitude sickness, but it didn’t help as much as I wanted.
It was a never-ending fight against my own body. Every step felt like a war—my mind wanted to keep going, but my body was screaming at me to stop, to breathe, to rest. I had never felt so helpless and out of control of my own body before.
The Freezing Cold That Hurt Deep
As we climbed higher, the temperature dropped sharply, and the freezing cold hit me hard. I wore all the warm clothes I had—thermal jackets, windproof pants, and face coverings but it still wasn’t enough. The icy air cut through my skin, and every breath felt like I was inhaling frost.
One night, I woke up to see frost covering the inside of my tent. My fingers were so cold they went numb, and I had to be careful to avoid frostbite. I knew Everest would be freezing, but feeling it myself was completely different. Every step felt like walking through a never-ending icy desert. I fought to keep my face warm, my hands from freezing, and my body from giving in to the cold.
The cold wasn’t just painful it was dangerous. It wore me down, both physically and mentally. I kept telling myself that the only way to survive was to keep moving forward, no matter how hard it felt.
The Death Zone
I had heard about the “Death Zone” before above 8,000 meters, where the body begins to deteriorate and oxygen is scarce—but experiencing it firsthand was a whole new level of suffering. The air was so thin that each breath felt shallow and insufficient. With every step, I gasped for air, my body screaming for oxygen. It felt like I was suffocating with every movement, like I was in a dream where no matter how hard I tried to breathe, I couldn’t get enough.
My heart raced, and I could feel the weight of my own body becoming too much to bear. My legs felt like lead, every movement felt labored. It was no longer about the summit. It was about surviving, about making it through another day, another hour, another step. I couldn’t think straight anymore. It felt like my brain was becoming foggy, like the oxygen deprivation was eroding my sense of self. I was no longer climbing for glory; I was climbing to stay alive.
The Constant Risk of Falling
As I climbed higher, the terrain grew more treacherous. Steep rock faces, icy slopes, and deep crevasses made every step feel like a calculated risk. The constant fear of falling was always in the back of my mind. I knew that one wrong step, one slip, could send me tumbling down the mountain, and that would be the end of it.
There were moments when I had to inch my way across narrow ridgelines with a sheer drop on one side. The snow underfoot was unstable, and the rocks were slippery. I relied heavily on the fixed ropes, but even they didn’t always feel like enough. I thought about the climbers before me who had made the same journey, and how many had fallen, never to return. The fear of death was real, and it shadowed me every moment.
The weight of this danger was something I had only understood in theory before. Now, I felt it in my bones.
Dehydration and Extreme Tiredness
The further I climbed, the less I was able to drink. The dry air of the mountain sucked the moisture from my body, and I struggled to keep hydrated. I felt my energy depleting with every step. At night, I barely slept waking up in a cold sweat, unable to rest properly, and feeling the strain of the climb in my every muscle.
Dehydration made everything harder. My body grew weaker, my stomach felt empty despite eating, and I began to feel the signs of physical collapse. I had to fight myself to stay focused, to keep eating, drinking, and pushing forward. The exhaustion became unbearable, and at times, I wondered if I could go any further. But there was no turning back. I had to keep moving, step by step
The Top: A Time of Victory
When I finally reached the summit of Mount Everest, I stood there for a brief moment breathing in the thin air and taking in the breathtaking view. The moment should have been euphoric, but instead, I felt a profound sense of exhaustion and disbelief. It wasn’t the victory I imagined. The summit was the culmination of everything I had endured, but it didn’t feel like the triumph of a glorious battle. It felt like the end of a struggle, a struggle against the elements, against my body, and against my own mind.
I had climbed the world’s highest peak, but I wasn’t sure if I had conquered it. I had just barely survived it. The challenges had been far beyond anything I’d anticipated. And yet, standing on top of the world, I realized that Everest had done something to me. It had tested my limits, broken me, and somehow rebuilt me.
The mountain had changed me. I left Everest knowing that I would never be the same person again and that the struggle was worth it.