He Walked 2,000 Kilometres From the Indian Ocean to the Top of Everest — With No Vehicle, Ever
Romanian mountaineer Cris Cristea reached the summit on 20 May 2026 after more than 100 days on foot from the Bay of Bengal. Then he turned around and started walking home.
On 8 March 2026, a Romanian mountaineer named Madalin "Cris" Cristea stepped off a beach in Digha, on India's Bay of Bengal coast, and started walking north. No support vehicle, no train, no bus. Just under eleven weeks and roughly 2,000 kilometres later, on 20 May, he stood on the summit of Mount Everest — a mountain most people fly, drive and helicopter their way toward in stages. Then, consistent with a project that only counts if you do the whole thing under your own power, he turned around and started walking back to the sea.
Key facts
- Departed Digha, West Bengal, India on 8 March 2026; summited Everest on 20 May 2026
- Covered roughly 2,000 km on foot at a pace of 30–45 km a day
- Reached the summit on the single busiest day of the 2026 season — 274 climbers summited that day
- Part of "Traintosummit": climbing every continent's highest peak, unsupported, from sea level to summit and back to the sea
Cristea calls the project Traintosummit, and Everest was never going to be the easy leg. He began it in 2024, walking 200 km from the Chilean coast to Aconcagua and crossing Tanzania on foot to reach Kilimanjaro — summiting both and walking all the way back to sea level afterward, no shortcuts either direction. A 2025 attempt on Oceania's Karstensz Pyramid had to be abandoned; the approach to base camp simply isn't safely walkable without a helicopter, the one tool his rules don't allow. Everest was always going to be the test of whether the whole idea could survive the Himalaya.
The Traintosummit project so far
| Peak | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Aconcagua (South America) | 2024 | Completed, sea to sea |
| Kilimanjaro (Africa) | 2024 | Completed, sea to sea |
| Karstensz Pyramid (Oceania) | 2025 | Abandoned — base camp access unsafe on foot |
| Everest (Asia) | 2026 | Summited; walking back to the Indian Ocean |
Once he crossed into Nepal and reached the Khumbu, Cristea worked with the Kathmandu-based outfitter Asian Trekking, who handled his climbing permits and logistics — walking to Base Camp doesn't exempt anyone from Nepal's Sagarmatha National Park and Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality permit fees, or from the standard climbing-permit process every Everest expedition goes through. He used a summit of Lobuche East, a popular 6,000m trekking peak in the same valley, to acclimatize before joining the queue for the summit push — the same strategy plenty of ordinary trekkers use before attempting a big Khumbu peak, just compressed into a schedule with 2,000 pre-walked kilometres already in his legs.
What this means for trekkers
What this means for you
Nobody needs to walk from the ocean to attempt Everest Base Camp — but Cristea's approach is really just extreme, patient acclimatization, the same principle that keeps ordinary trekkers safe on the standard 12–14 day itinerary. Slow, staged altitude gain beats a rushed one every time.
If his sea-level start-to-summit approach makes you want to test your own legs on a genuine Himalayan peak — minus the 2,000 km warm-up — our guide to training for a 6,000m peak covers the same acclimatization logic on a schedule that fits a normal holiday. Lobuche East, the peak Cristea used to acclimatize, is one of the most accessible technical summits in the Khumbu and pairs naturally with an Everest Base Camp itinerary.
Source: GearJunkie, with season statistics from Alan Arnette's 2026 Everest season summary.
Cover photo: Clinton Weaver via Pexels (Pexels License).
Source: GearJunkie
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