Climbing Everest

And the life lessons I learned: entrepreneur Aditya Gupta at last Tuesday’s meeting

ONE night, at the Everest base camp, we started climbing higher. One typically started at around 1 o’clock in the night and climbed for about three hours into the Khumbu Icefall which is one of the most dangerous parts of Everest. There is ice, under which is water, and my whole left leg plunged through the ice and into the freezing waters. One leg was still above it and I screamed for help. Some people helped me to pull it out but it was -25 degree and my whole leg was soaked. I was completely out of energy. I could not pull myself up and it was hard to climb even a small slope. I asked the sherpa if he could take me back down. He said that was not possible because the equipment was such that you could only go up, not come down. Another time, we were nearing camp 4, two days before Summit, at about 26,000 feet altitude and on our supply of supplemental oxygen. My sherpa left for camp and I was climbing alone. Suddenly, my oxygen cylinder was finished. I still had another hour to go but no oxygen.

While there, you are consumed with the expedition, and climbing and saving yourself, you are not able to get to grips with what is going on. But god was kind to me and the mountain was kind to me and I got back in good shape. It is afterwards that the expedition keeps on playing in your head and it is at that time that I arrived at my takeaways from this lifetime of an expedition. When I went through these situations, they became tattooed upon my brain. It is not your business under threat or something else that you can get back later but your life itself. The stuff that works when your life is on your line, that is the stuff I transfer to life and business in general, and, like the pandemic that we are in the middle of right now.

First, passion plus preparation lead to performance. Often, we say we are passionate about something but are we preparing enough? Or, if we are preparing enough, are we passionate enough that when things go wrong, or don’t work out, we still keep on performing because of our passion? The learning is: PREPARATION ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH AND PASSION ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH. WHEN THE TWO COME TOGETHER, THAT IS WHEN WE PERFORM.

There is a physical and mental part of preparation. Typically, for an expedition like Everest, for a person like me, I have to prepare for at least a year in advance. You can prepare for the physical side of it, you can lose weight and build capacity. But the biggest game is mental, and it is not something that you can prepare in a year or two. It is about who you are and it will not change all of a sudden due to some pressure situation.

Unless you are passionate enough, that mental strength will not happen. Passion and preparation lead to performance and this is what we see in various aspects of our life. Rotary does projects and you have seen that it takes both things.

Second, do not be scared of scale. Scale of ambition or plan should not scare us. Things can be very large when we plan an expedition like Everest. The first time you see Everest is about 40 days before you start climbing to the top, after three days of trekking in Nepal from Namche Bazaar. You see a little peak in the sky and you are fascinated. Over the next few days, step by step, you keep going closer. Then, on the final day when you are in camp 4, you live for the Summit, it is still out there in your face — it’s massive. So the scare is that it is easy to get demoralised. Many people quit because they are not prepared for the scale of what it is, the danger of what lies ahead. But I am saying that the scale should not scare us and I am linking it to life and business; THERE CAN BE PROJECTS OR GOALS YOU ARE TRYING TO PURSUE AND NATURALLY THEY HAVE TO BE IMPORTANT ENOUGH THAT YOU DEDICATE YOURSELF TO THEM BUT THEIR SCALE SHOULD NOT SCARE YOU — IT SHOULD MOTIVATE YOU.

Third, the power of focus. In some places I climbed on ladders and delicate footholds with hardly six to nine inches of space for my feet. If I were to look to my left or right or down at that time, it would be hard to be able to walk. Your eyes have to be focused only on where you should stand. If your eyes go to the left and right, the danger of it will demoralize you. Connect this back to life: THERE ARE MANY NEGATIVE SITUATIONS THAT RUN PARALLEL WITH THE POSITIVE. It is very easy to see what is happening now in the country. If I am not focussed on what I can do and what I should do, and if I keep looking at how I am going to lose money, how my business is going to go bad, how things are going to go wrong, it is going to be hard for me to be productive and to carry on doing what I need to do. The power of focus on Everest happens by focusing only on the spots that you are supposed to look at and not keep processing all the dangers of the time but process what needs to be done and do that.

Similarly, a business adventure has a lot of parallels in life. There are Olympic athletes used by business training organisations who will tell you the same things in different words: IT IS ABOUT PREPARATION, PASSION, FOCUS, AIMING AT SOMETHING HIGH ENOUGH AND KEEP GETTING ON WITH IT.

Fourth, the power of one step at a time. You might have heard it many times but I connected it back to Everest; it’s massive and dangerous and over 45 days, there are many situations where it becomes really hard to put just one step ahead of the other. On the night of the climb, from camp 4 to top, every single step that you’re taking — there are five to eight deep breaths between each single step — it is like this for the whole night, 13 hours from the camp to the Summit. But the point is to keep taking those steps and not think how much is left and how will I ever get there.

On the other hand, I have to think about how much I have already covered. And I am keeping at it, I will keep walking, crawling, whatever, but I will go. Obviously, we have to bear in mind that if something is getting too dangerous one has to use one’s judgement to gauge when it is the right time to return. It is a balance between how determined I am but at the same time not crossing the line. Most of the deaths happen because people did not turn around at the right time. Sometimes the overzealous approach to something, completely ignoring what you are feeling inside, but at same time you can’t keep giving up. So, one step at a time, but obviously with a positive frame. It got me to the top of Everest. I am a very ordinary business person, ordinary level of fitness, no big athlete or whatever. But had it not been for the one step at a time mentality, I would have given up 10 times during the whole expedition.

Fifth, expect that you will have to deal with the unexpected. We can plan and have our equipment, training, teams and most capable people. However, WE CANNOT PREDICT EVERYTHING THAT WILL HAPPEN DURING LIFE, EXPEDITION OR BUSINESS. I should not be panicking because I know that things will not run exactly like planned. You have to accept to deal with it so the first thing in my mind is to not panic.

Look at the Coronavirus situation and look at all these five lessons. The power of focus: I am focusing on what I can do. We are doing a lot of training videos, we are doing work in our company which we can use when we start operating. We are using all the time to create training videos and training content which we can use better when we begin operating. We are able to focus on what we are able to do and keep that in mind instead of worrying that we can’t do anything in the lock down.

Similarly, I am taking one day at a time because every day we have things going on, if you are investors, a job person, your business you don’t know when will open, so that one step at a time is very applicable. Totally applicable lesson if I am expecting to deal with something unexpected happening, I am not going to panic.

Another important lesson on Everest is the value of time. The amount of oxygen that you have is fixed. Most accidents and deaths happen because of the traffic jams on Everest. The big deal about traffic jams is that you have stopped, there is traffic, but your oxygen is constantly on. At some point, you will be out of oxygen and you don’t want to be at 27,000 ft when that happens. THAT OXYGEN TANK IS LIKE THE TIME AVAILABLE FOR US IN OUR LIFE. REGARDLESS OF WHAT WE ARE DOING, OUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT. TIME IS EQUIVALENT TO THE OXYGEN TANK ON EVEREST.

Rotarians ask

Please share your experiences of being so close to death and see dead bodies around you.

There is no such thing as not being scared; fear is a good thing — the issue is how do you feel about fear itself. We have to be intimate with fear. One time, when we were coming down from the Summit, I heard someone calling me, ‘Aditya Sir’. It was a Kashmiri woman whose camp was close to ours. She was crying on the ridge that her oxygen had finished and her sherpa had gone.

This was at 28,000 feet! My sherpa and I talked over what to do but she was collapsing every two minutes. And this is the harsh reality, you feel you could not be walking away from somebody who is dying and needs your help but after sometime I could see that I couldn’t help her anymore.

Again and again in stories, you have to help people but sometimes you can’t do anything. Don’t forget your oxygen is running out too. After 10-15 minutes, I had to ask her to wait for someone from her team and when we came back, I heard that one of the women from that camp had died. I was scared that it was her. Later, it turned out to be someone else. This girl actually came back to camp from 28,000 feet without an oxygen tank. Death and fear are scary but it’s about attitude.