Beyond Possible summary

People often assumed that since Nimsdai Purja was born in Nepal, he had grown up climbing the mountains in his backyard. But the truth was, Nims, as he was commonly known, didn’t start mountaineering until around 2012, when he was 29 years old. By that time, he’d already been on military excursions through dangerous jungles and hostile territories, building up the steely determination that would take him to the world’s highest peaks.

Nims was born in 1983 in the village of Dana, in western Nepal, into a loving family with very little money. His parents had married across caste lines, angering their relatives and forcing them to build a life largely on their own. His father had joined the Gurkhas, a legendary regiment of the British Army made up of Nepali and Indian soldiers. Nims’s three older brothers also became Gurkhas, so it perhaps wasn’t surprising that from a young age Nims also set his sights on joining as well.

He got that chance as an 18-year old when he passed the demanding strength and running tests on his second attempt. Soon he was flying to Britain to begin military training. He became a combat engineer and was eventually deployed to Afghanistan, where his duties included searching for improvised explosive devices. Not unlike mountain climbing, it was dangerous, precise work in which a small mistake could have devastating consequences.

But Nims was already looking for his next challenge: to join the Special Boat Service, an elite part of Britain's Special Forces. He wanted to join this specific unit because he’d heard they were the toughest of the tough. Nims put everything into preparing for selection, an early sign of how capable he was of pushing himself to extremes. After completing his daily military duties, he would cycle seventy miles, swim thousands of meters, and get up at two in the morning to march between bases carrying a seventy-five-pound rucksack.

It paid off. During the grueling Special Forces selection process, an instructor discovered that Nims had lost the protective cap from his water bottle – a tiny lapse that could nevertheless ruin a covert operation. As punishment, a heavy rock was dropped into his already loaded backpack. Nims hauled the extra weight across the hills and still finished the day’s march as the fastest recruit.

Earning his place in the SBS, Nims became a trauma medic and operated in war zones. Serving in Afghanistan, he had a near-death experience when a sniper’s bullet hit the shoulder guard on his rifle and knocked him off a building. An inch in any direction and the bullet would have likely killed him. 

Nims wasn’t a very religious person, but his experiences were causing him to develop his own philosophy. Whatever goal stood in front of him, that became his driving belief, his God. As long as he committed himself and gave everything he had, he could attain whatever goal he set for himself.

Then, in 2012, that restless ambition found an entirely new arena.

During some time off, Nims visited the Himalayas, trekking alongside renowned Nepali mountaineer Dorje Khatri, who’d agreed to teach him the fundamentals of climbing. Soon Nims put on crampons for the first time and quickly proved himself a natural in the deep snow and ice. When he reached the eastern summit of Mount Lobuche, he gazed upon the peaks of Everest, Lhotse and Makalu in the distance.

It was as if Nims had discovered his true purpose in life, and he immediately wanted more.