PODCAST: 'Goodbye Everest, I'll be back,' this week's Travel Tales with Fergal

My longest walk was also my favourite walk. I spent 20 wonderful days trekking from village to village through the incredible snow-capped Annapurna mountain region in the Nepalese Himalayas in 2000.

We started and finished the trek from the famous activity tourist town of Pokhara, which is a hive of buzzing walking and mountain climbing enthusiasts during the spring climbing season.

I walked the world famous Annapurna Circuit trail which takes you through mist-covered valleys, remote villages and sacred monasteries.

The route brought us over a freshly covered snow pass of 5,500 metres which tested our resilience to altitude sickness and stamina.

But the harder the challenge the greater the sense of accomplishment.

I learned to appreciate the warmth of the sherpas and their deep sense of spirituality and adherence to ancestral traditions. I admired their stoicism as they carried loads on their backs which were multiples of their body weight up steep, narrow mountain paths with a ready smile for passing walkers.

Kathmandu is the ancient capital full of ornate Hindu and golden Buddhist temples that transport you to medieval times with its narrow streets filled with the smoky haze and familiar smell of burning incense and the distant sounds of melodic bells chiming and the soft modulating murmurings of chanting monks.

Kathmandu is where most mountaineers first arrive before they attempt to climb the highest and most famous mountain of them all – Everest.

That is where my Travel Tales with Podcast guest, Damian Browne, started his epic attempt to conquer Everest last year during the height of the Covid lockdowns.

Everest was to be Browne’s sixth of the seven summits mountaineering challenge which was first completed in 1985 by American, Richard Bass, who scaled the highest mountain peaks on all seven continents.

Damian Browne hails from Galway and is a former professional rugby player who has played for Leinster, Northampton, Brive and Oyonnax.

Damian’s passion for travel and adventure has led him to visit more than 50 countries on six continents. His challenges have been various, including the Marathon des Sables through the Moroccan Sahara and a solo row across the Atlantic.

Since he first climbed Elbrus (the highest mountain in Europe) in Russia in 2018 he has been obsessed with successfully climbing Everest.

His original trip was called off in 2020 when the pandemic took hold and he only found out he could go to Nepal in April last year a few days after his Australian partner gave birth to his first child in Brisbane.

Damien is an adventurer in the truest sense of the word using the world’s most extreme environments to test his physical and mental capabilities.

Damien has covered more ground than many of the great explorers of the early 20th century including spending 63-days rowing solo across the Atlantic. An epic trip he previously spoke to me about on my very first podcast in 2020.

I have always been fascinated with stories of Everest’s often deadly history from books like Into Thin Air and Touching the Void to the brilliant films Sherpas and the recent 14 Peaks by the Nepalese climber Nirmal Purja.

So I was riveted when following the literal ups and downs of his Everest attempt in April and May last year.

Everest has been climbed over 10,200 times since 1953 and by only 54 Irish climbers since the first successful attempt in 1993 by Ulsterman, Dawson Stelfox.

There has been a lot of controversy associated with Everest recently with 19 climbers dying in 2019.

There was also much disquiet in 2021 due to the harrowing effects of Covid on the general Nepalese population at a time when many hundreds of scarce oxygen canisters were being used on Everest by the summiting teams.

Surprisingly, Damian said it was a record year for permits with over 400 given out as the Government sought to claw back money lost in 2020.

This is the increased potential exposure to contracting Covid on the mountain.

Damian started his Everest attempt late due the birth of his daughter, so he started out from Lukla to base camp five days behind his team.

He struggled on that trek only to discover he had contracted Covid when he finally reached basecamp. This led to him having to fly back to Kathmandu for ten days to quarantine.

He managed to get back to basecamp where he began his rotations up to camps two and three to acclimatise. But with great difficulty due to being weakened by Covid.

Damian could slowly feel his strength and stamina return as May progressed to the point when he was ready to make a summit attempt, just as the traditional summit window was about to close.

Then a huge cyclone converged on the mountain shredding camp three. Damian was still willing to make a go of it when a new Covid outbreak among his sherpa team finally led his team to call it a day and leave the mountain for another year.

Damian’s last Instagram post the day he left Everest was: “Goodbye Everest. It has been an experience but I’ll be back.”

Damian was gutted that he couldn’t fulfil his dream on this occasion, but he talks inspiringly about the experience on the podcast extolling the beauty of the mountain especially the Khumbu Icefalls.

He explained that by going to the edge on these extreme expeditions he is continuously learning about the limits of his mind and body.

A process he brings to his training courses that he holds called the Damian Browne Method online.

You would think that after such an intense and tumultuous trip Damian would take a break from adventuring but as he explains on the podcast he went straight into training for his biggest challenge yet – a world record attempt to row unsupported across the north Atlantic with his best friend Fergus Farrell from New York to his hometown Galway this summer.

They hope to break the record held by Norwegian-born Americans Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo which has stood since 1896.

Their row will see them take on 4,937 km across some of the wildest, most unforgiving ocean on the planet. I am looking forward to standing on the docks in Galway this summer to cheer them on with a huge crowd when they hopefully arrive in one piece and as record breakers.

To listen to the Travel Tales with Fergal Podcast of Damian’s amazing story of his Everest attempt and his planned Atlantic row check out traveltaleswithfergal.ie