He Climbed 14 of the World's Highest Peaks in 189 Days. A Mountain He'd Summited Before Just Killed Nirmal Purja

Ask any mountain guide in Nepal where the phrase “nothing is impossible” came from, and most will say the same name: Nirmal Purja. On 30 July 2026, Purja — 43, known across the trekking world simply as Nims Dai — was killed in an avalanche on Broad Peak, the world's 12th-highest mountain, on the Pakistan side of the Karakoram range. He was one of ten climbers swept away that day. Seven bodies, including his, had been recovered within days of the search; teams continued looking for the final three.

We at Travel Himalaya Nepal never guided him personally, but every guide on our roster grew up in his shadow. He was born in 1983 in Dana, a village in Myagdi district that many of our Annapurna-region guides know well — a reminder that the man who redrew the limits of human endurance came from the same hill villages our own trekking crews call home.

The record nobody thought was possible

Purja spent 16 years in the British Army, first as a Gurkha rifleman, then as the first Nepali ever accepted into the elite Special Boat Service. In 2019 he left the military to attempt something climbers had called reckless: summiting all fourteen of the world's 8,000-metre peaks — Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga and eleven others — not over a career, but in a single climbing season. He called the project Project Possible. He finished in 189 days, smashing a record that had stood at just under eight years, and picked up six more world records along the way. Only around 40 people in history have climbed all fourteen 8,000ers at all; Purja did it faster than anyone believed a human body could recover between ascents.

What set Purja apart from most speed climbers was that he kept stopping to save other people's lives. During the Project Possible season he broke off his own summit push on Annapurna to rescue Malaysian climber Chin Wui Kin, and gave up his own oxygen reserves to help three exhausted climbers descend Kanchenjunga. That combination — soldier's fitness, a Sherpa-and-Gurung support network, and a willingness to turn back for a stranger — is what made him a hero inside Nepal's guiding community, not just a headline abroad.

Who else was lost on Broad Peak

The avalanche hit around midday, high on Broad Peak's upper slopes, and the ten climbers it killed came from five countries — a reminder of how international a serious Karakoram expedition really is.

Nadhira Al Harthy, part of the same expedition, had become the first Omani woman to summit Everest only weeks earlier. Nepal's prime minister said the climbers' “courage, dedication and contributions would remain an inspiration.”

What this means for trekkers

Purja's own career is proof the mountains reward preparation and punish overconfidence in equal measure — he survived a decade in the death zone by knowing exactly when to turn back for someone else, and was lost on a peak he had summited before. For trekkers dreaming of graduating from base-camp treks to their first real summit, our Island Peak and Mera Peak climbs, or the fuller Nepal Three Peaks Expedition, are built around exactly that discipline — trained NMA guides, conservative turnaround times, and acclimatisation schedules that are never rushed. If you're weighing how much real danger a Himalayan trek carries before committing to one, our reporting on what the medical data says about the Everest Base Camp trek is a good place to start.

Source: The Kathmandu Post.

Cover photo: Iamthanes via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).