When Nirmal Purja Revealed to Joe Rogan What Motivated Him to Climb the World’s 14 Highest Peaks in Just Over Six Months
Pioneer of modern mountaineering Nirmal Purja, also known as Nimsdai, tragically lost his life on July 30, following the avalanche on Broad Peak in Pakistan. Purja’s death was confirmed on Saturday by his company, Elite Expeditions.
Nimsdai was a Nepali-British mountaineer. Before pursuing mountaineering full-time, he served in the British Army with the Brigade of Gurkhas and later in the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Service.
He was best known for climbing the world’s 14 highest peaks in just over six months. The Netflix film 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible chronicled Nimsdai Purja’s aforementioned achievement.
Notably, Purja also became the first person in history to summit Mt. Everest, Lhotse, and Makalu within just 2 days and 30 minutes.
In 2021, Purja and nine fellow Nepali mountaineers became the first team in history to successfully summit K2 during winter. Purja was the only member of the team to reach the summit without using supplemental oxygen.
He broke numerous mountaineering records during his career, including setting the fastest time to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without using supplemental oxygen. The Nepali-Brit also held multiple Guinness World Records.
His latest goal was to become the first person in history to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks twice without supplemental oxygen. However, while attempting Broad Peak (the second-to-last mountain he had to summit to complete the aforementioned feat), an avalanche claimed his and his teammates’ lives.
Our thoughts are with Nimsdai, the other climbers who lost their lives on Broad Peak, and their families, during this incredibly difficult time.
As we remember Nirmal Purja’s extraordinary legacy, let’s revisit the time he spoke to longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan about his motivation behind Project Possible.
What motivated Nirmal Purja, aka Nimsdai, to climb the World’s 14 Highest Peaks?
On The Joe Rogan Experience in 2024, Nirmal Purja revealed what motivated him to summit the 14 highest peaks in the world. He said:
“So, Joe, you asked me two questions. Let me break it down. So, in 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 sh*t, you know, that you know, people wouldn’t have probably seen in the movies and all that.”
“What happened in 2019 was I [ Nirmal Purja ] found the purpose. And uh look, just to just to even put things into perspective at this point, I had served 16 years in the British military. I had only 6 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 am I doing this?
After serving in the British military for 16 years, Nirmal Purja had only 6 years of service left for the full pension. However, he put in his resignation to start Project Possible so that he could prove to the masses that nothing is impossible and also raise the name of the ‘Nepalese climbers, the Sherpas, who are the kings of the 8000 ers but still do not get enough credit.’
After Nirmal Purja quit his job, his brother was not happy with the decision and did not talk to him for 3 months. However, Nims, who had found his purpose, did not want to look back or regret the decison he had made, as he had much bigger plans. On JRE, he added:
“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 Nepalese climbing community, the Sherpas are the kings of 8,000ers, but we never had the right, you know, like credit. And I wanted to raise the name of the Nepalese climbers. And those two purposes gave me the strength. So, what happened after that was straight away I went to the HR. I put in my resignation. It was again literally to show the world that nothing is impossible. There’s no excuses.”
After trying every method to raise funds for his high-altitude mountaineering project and failing, Nirmal Purja put everything he had on the line. He burnt all his savings and even remortgaged his house to fund his project. He told Rogan that he received minor help from crowdfunding, but most people initially did not believe him when he said he would climb the World’s 14 Highest Peaks in just 7 months.
Despite all the setbacks and financial factors, on October 29, 2019, Nims completed summiting the world’s 14 highest peaks in just six months and six days and announced to the world that what everyone had labelled as impossible had finally been achieved.
Check out Nirmal Purja’s comments below:
