Team Neemopani
Hari Budha Magar, a Gurkha soldier who was almost killed while fighting with the British army in Afghanistan, became the first double above-the-knee amputee to reach the top of Mount Everest on Sunday, according to BBC.
“He made it to the top of Sagarmatha(Nepali name for Mount Everest ) on Friday around 3 p.m. After reaching the top of the peak, he went back down to the base camp and will go back to Kathmandu on Monday,
Magar, who was 43 at the time, lost both of his legs in 2010 when he accidentally set off an IED while on patrol in Afghanistan.
This happened while he was serving with the Gurkhas, a respected group of Nepalese troops who have been fighting alongside the British Army for more than two hundred years.
“When he woke up after the explosion, the father of three said he felt like his life was over,” BBC said. However, he returned his confidence after taking up skiing, golf, riding, and climbing.
He started trying to climb the big rock 11 days ago with a group of Nepalese hikers led by Krish Thapa, who was a Gurkha and SAS mountain troop leader himself.
The story says, “When things got hard, he said that thinking about his wonderful family and everyone who had helped him kept him going.”
Mark Inglis of New Zealand in 2006 and Xia Boyu of China in 2018 are two people who lost their legs below the knee to climb Everest.
Magar got artificial legs and, in addition to sailing around the Isle of Wight, he climbed several mountains, including Morocco’s Mount Toubkal, Scotland’s Ben Nevis, and Europe’s Mont Blanc.
The former soldier couldn’t go to the top of Everest because of a Nepalese rule that says double amputees and blind people can’t go climbing. Nepal’s highest court got rid of the rule in 2018 after Magar and other people put pressure on the government to let them climb.
“We can do anything we want as long as we can change our lives to fit the time and place. Magar told AFP last month before going to the Everest base camp, “There is no limit. The sky is the limit.”
On his website, the phrase “no legs, no limits” was used to describe his goal.
Nepal is known for having eight of the world’s ten highest peaks. Every spring, a lot of people go there to try new things. When the weather in the Himalayas is mild and the dangerous winds aren’t too strong, many people go there.
A tourism department worker named Bigyan Koirala told AFP that almost 450 hikers have already reached the top of Everest this season.
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This year, the government has given 478 climbing passes to people from other countries. Each one cost $11,000.
