Although the Chinese government had banned climbing the Sisapangma peak until 2019, it had accepted Purja’s request to scale the peak for the purpose of setting the world record and issued him a special permit.
Born in Dana village of Annapurna rural municipality-3 in 1983, Purja is a former British Gurkha and Special Boat Service (SBS) soldier, an elite special forces unit of the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy. On May 2019, Purja completed the first phase of his “Project Possible 14/7” confirming to have reached the first seven summits of the 14 eight-thousanders he intended to conquer within 7 months: Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Mount Everest and Nanga Parbat.
He completed the second phase within in July, 2019, climbing Nanga Parbat (8126 metres, Pakistan, climbed July 6, 2019), Gasherbrum I (8010 metres, Pakistan, climbed July 15, 2019), Gasherbrum II (8035 metres, Pakistan, climbed July 18, 2019), K2 (8611 metres, Pakistan, climbed July 24, 2019) and Broad Peak (8047 metres, Pakistan, climbed July 26, 2019). The third and last phase started in September 2019.
He summitted Cho Oyu (8188 meters, Tibet, China) on September 23, 2019 and Manaslu (8163 meters, Nepal) on September 27, 2019. He climbed Mt Dhaulagiri without oxygen. Eight of the 14 mountain peaks Purja has climbed are in Nepal. It is said so far no other mountaineer except Purja has climved 14 mountain peaks above 8,000 metres high in the shortest duration. RSS
