What Motivated Nims Purja to Climb 14 of the World's Tallest Mountains

When did you decide that you were gonna do this 14 Peaks thing and then film this? And like what was the moment where this idea came into your head? So, Jodie, obviously you asked me two questions. Let me break down. So, 2019, at this point, I served with the UK Special Forces for 10 years. I've been around the world. I have obviously done some crazy shit, you know, that people wouldn't have probably seen in the movies and all that. So what happened in 2019 was I found the purpose. And look, just to even put things into perspective, at this point, I had served 16 years in the British military. I had only six years left to get the full pension. So, you know, if you look from the financial perspective, you know, I'm really there to get the full pension. But then I got this idea like the 14 Peaks. So why I'm doing this? So I had two purposes. The first one was, look, doesn't matter where you come from, what your background is, whatever that is, you can literally show the world nothing is impossible. No excuses. And the second one was, look, the Netflix climbing community, the Sherpas are the king of a thousand. But we never had the right, you know, like, credits. And I wanted to raise the name of the Netflix climbers. And those two purposes gave me the strength. So what happened after that was straight away, I went to the HR. I put my resignation and people went mentally alike. You know, my brother is specifically like names. You know what? You're so selfish. Because at this point, I used to send, you know, a chunk of my salary every month to my mom and dad. I really believe that in our parents, you know, they look after us when we're like kids and vulnerable. And as a kid back to them, when they get older, they're also invulnerable. They cannot work and all that. So I was always, you know, like sending them money. So when I when I decided about this project and when I put the resignation, I know that there's no money going to them. My brother went really mentally like names. You know, you are the the most strongest financial contributor in our family. And you know what? None of the girls have ever been there. You should you should complete your career. And I was like, no, brother. And and we didn't talk for three months. Me and my brother and he's like my father. He's the one who sent me to boarding school. I'm going to slow you down here. So you had this idea. And because of this idea, you decided to resign. Yeah. This idea of climbing the 14 peaks when it first came in your head, what was your goal? It was just to elevate the Nepalese climbers. Was it to raise money? Was it to raise awareness? No. So it was again, literally to show the world that nothing is impossible. There's no excuses. But that's I wanted to. But that's not a career. Right. So you're not a career. You're quitting your career to show the world that nothing is impossible. I I didn't only quit my career. My brother, I put everything on the line. And I'll go in details what I mean by that. So I resigned and it was really tough. Look, I came from this completely different role, special forces background. I had never experienced of doing the fundraising. And when I first started talking about the project, people were like, nims, it's not possible. So for those people who doesn't understand what I was trying to do was so there are 14 mountains in the world above eight thousand meters and eight thousand meters is the Dethjian Peak. And the fastest. Excuse me. Eight thousand meters is what? It's a Dethjian. Death zone. So the reason why it's called Dethjian is from that altitude, nobody can survive. The human body is literally dying. So that's why it's called the Dethjian Peak, because all those 14 are above a thousand meters. So you can only be up there for a very small amount of time. Yeah. Yeah. And so the fastest time was a week, sort of eight years, to be precise. It was seven years, 11 months and 14 days. And the guy who tried to break that record broke it only by one week. So that was that was that. And then I said, I will do that in seven months. And people were like, no, it's impossible. Again, you know, those guys who are listening just to put this into simple perspective. So if the record for full marathon is now two hours, what I was saying there then was I'm going to do that in 10 minutes. And that's why nobody believed in. And and so it was crazy. I used to wake up at like four o'clock, write the email, take early train to London, meet all the, you know, entrepreneurs, you know, corporate organizers and piece them, repeat the same thing, come back home, quick food. Then I write again in the follow up email. Hey, nice to meet you today. And, you know, follow up email. Let me stop you there. Hold on. So you have this idea. You don't have any experience in filmmaking. You don't have any experience in the media. You have no experience in doing anything in the public eye. Now, everything you've done has been just a kind of grinding as a gurkha grinding as a special forces operator. This is what you're doing. And then you just decide I'm going to do this and I want to make a movie about it. Yeah. So who do you contact? How do you even start that process? Yeah, so it was it was tough. So the first thing was to get the money to go and climb. So how did you even know how much money you needed? So the high altitude mountaineering is quite expensive. Let's say even if somebody want to do this, the whole 14 picks, it will roughly cost around two millions. Two million dollars. And because I was going as a very like bare minimum because I don't need that much support. I put roughly under a million margin. And you know what, brother? Nothing. There was no funding after one year of like going everywhere. And then what I did, the first thing was. When you say go everywhere, like how do you even start? Like I don't have any experience in that. So I don't know who would I contact to fund a giant project where I'm going to climb 14 peaks. I'll just give you this example. So one of the example was, you know, I wrote a handwritten letter to who is the owner of Virgin. I Google it. Richard Ranson. Yeah. Yes. And you know, I had I write that in a very long letter full hand written. And I cover that and put the put those in a stamp so that you need to get his attention and nothing came. So I was just going after everything, anything from outdoor companies, outdoor clothing. Already after you had already quit your job. I have already quit. So I have already made the decision. And that's why it was so stressful because now all my family are suffering because of my decision. My poor wife, she was like, you know, and for the first time, you know, like I had to suffer through this kind of, you know, like the stress. Look, I have I have done HR. I have been deployed all over the world. I have operated in very like that. That split seconds kind of, you know, like environment where your decision has to be like bombers. And and that doesn't stress me out. But here it was mental. My eyes. How were you making a living? It was like that. How are you making money? So at this point, we didn't have money. So no money. So how are you eating? How are you paying your rent? So whatever we had, a bit of saving and all that. It was there. So you were burning through your savings while trying to achieve this goal. Yeah. Yeah. And so what was the first thing that hit that let you know that this is possible? Because I believed in it. No, no, no. That's not what I mean. What was the first thing where someone said, yes, where someone said, I'll give you money? No. So what happened was the funding was really, really struggling. And what I did was, you know what, people don't believe it because, of course, in their eyes, you know, like what even Red Bull says, it's like swimming to the moon. So even when they say things like that, so of course, you know, people were like, oh, it's too much stuff. Then what I did was I re-morgas my house and put every money I can put into this project. And that was like only like less than I would say 7% of the whole funding. And this is before anybody's contributed. Yeah. Yeah. So you have no investors. Nothing. You don't even have Netflix. Forget Netflix. And I'll come into that story later on, brother. So at this point and eventually I started doing GoFunding. I had like no social media. So in March 2019, when I resigned from the special forces, I had no idea, but I didn't even have Facebook, Instagram, anything. Nothing. Nothing. So I had to learn how to do this. All this hashtag and everything. It would drive me nuts. Do you do all your social media? Now is still yes. So you reached out to me for social media. That's actually you. Yeah. Because I never know. This might be some. That was me. Yeah. I never know because I think it might be some assistant somewhere. PR team. Yeah. I have a team now, but I still do my thing because then it's authentic. I do too. I do my thing too. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So going back into that one, Joe, what I really believed in was, okay, people doesn't believe now, but if I start climbing this mountain in the manner and in the style that I said I would do it, it's going to be possible. So I took the flight to Nepal with 15% of the funding. Then there were a bit of like in a small, like, you know, I would say sponsorship came in a few money from GoFundMe. And at that point, when I fly to Nepal, I had 15% of the total funding. So the first mountain I choose was Annapurna. So in Annapurna is like where every four climbers who tried to climb, three dice trying. So that was my first mountain. And you know what? This was the first time ever in the history of my life. Hold on. You said every four climbers, three die. Yeah. Isn't it every four climbers, one die? No, that's not on Annapurna. This is, that's on K2. This is Annapurna. That's K2. So most people die. Yeah. Jesus. That's your first one. First one. And this mountain. So I guess if you were going to die, you're going to die quick. Let's get it over with. That's so nuts. Now, what are they dying from? Are they dying from? From avalanches. It's the mountain where you see like, you know, like avalanches crumbling every like, you know, every minute. That is so crazy. Every four climbers, three die? Yeah. That sounds so insane. Mate, that's, that's crazy. That mountain and Jamie's looking it up right now. He's freaking out too. No one's quicker at looking shit up than Jamie, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? This mountain, you know, the big thing, what I was trying to say Joe was, how do you spell that mountain? It's Annapurna. Annapurna. Annapurna. Yes. So how many people have climbed it? All told. I'm not gonna lie. I have no clue. Here it goes. 32%. There've been fewer than 200 summits of the mountain and 61 people have lost their lives. So it's not quite that much. No, you know what? Because I changed that statistics in 2019 when I went there and set the fixed lines with my team, more than I think 50 people submitted in 2019. Right. But here's the stat. Every three people reached the top, one person dies. So you got it reversed. That makes more sense. Okay. It's close enough. It's still. But you know what? It's nothing. It's still very, very dangerous. It's not like it's less impressive. Okay. You know what Joe? I'm not gonna argue on that. But in the last two years. It's fucking Jamie. He's a wizard. I'm telling you. In the last two years, I think there are around 80 summits. I can't believe there's one. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Stay home. So that is insane though, that that many people die. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Annapurna is, and you know what? This was probably the first time in my history where I was out of my shape because every energy I had was on the computers, writing email. And I was. Oh, you're out of shape. As you see on the movie, I was 10 kg heavier. I hadn't trained at all. And I was like, you know what? You have insane cardio. That's one of the things from the movie that was so evident. You have very, very unusual cardio. Do you think that some of that is, you're just gifted? Or do you think that's from the training that you had when you were a young boy? Do you think you just like made yourself have insane cardio from those runs you did when you were 16 years old? Because when they were doing that VO2 max test on you, that's insane, man. Your cardio is like elite of the elite. Yeah. I think it's that muscle memory, you know, where I have been training, you know, since I was a kid. And you know, like nonstop. And obviously, which we discussed earlier. I think that's what it made me who I am today. The hard work, the training and training and training. But, you know, like a lot of people think probably, you know, like, oh, yeah, Nimsh is from Nepal. He's from the mountains. And he climbed all this peak. You know, I grew up in the most flat and the hottest part of Nepal. How flat is it? What's the altitude there? It's almost like in a sea level. And it is like 40, 45 degrees hot Celsius. Oh, that's very hot. That's very hot. Even the flies would die on the road. Yeah. What is 45 degrees Celsius? That's like a hundred. I want to say that's like 110. Is it higher? Yeah, 113. 113. It's crazy, mate. And it's that hot sometimes, you know, those are the sea level.