From Mount Royal to Mount Everest

Sudarshan Gautam has sat on a mountain top and looked down at the world and its troubles. He’s inhaled freedom and it made him feel alive.

Not long after the man with no arms came down from the Himalayan peak of Mount Yala, he realized he couldn’t expose his wife Ambika and their future children to the threat of terrorism any longer.

The native of Nepal had already been kidnapped and intimidated once for expressing openly his political views during his time as president of the student’s association at a Nepalese university.

“I believe in a democracy and that’s why they wanted to attack me. Nepal is a free country, but we have some terrorist problems,” says Gautam. “They’ve killed thousands of people back home.”

New home, new dreams

Escaping to the freedom and cold weather of Canada, Gautam — a non-credit English language student at Mount Royal University — has plans to go back to the top of the world and become only the second person with a disability and the first amputee to climb Mount Everest.

“I never felt as if I don’t have both arms,” says Gautam resolutely.  “There’s nothing I believe I can’t do.”

Gautam recently announced his plans to climb Mount Everest in 2012.

He doesn’t claim he’ll return with the 10 commandments or anything so divine, but he does hope his trip will raise awareness and enough funds to start a school in Nepal for people with disabilities and orphans.

“The disabled and the orphans aren’t treated very well in Nepal and I hope this school would help them overcome that disadvantage.”

Gautam has a speaking tour scheduled through Europe later this summer where he had hoped to raise the bulk of his $1-million goal. Gautam reports that recent media attention has resulted in local supporters covering nearly three quarters of that goal.

“It’s been great — many politicians have reached out to me and so have many non-profit organizations since the recent media coverage. I should definitely reach my goal by the end of the summer.”

From kite-flyer to world-changer

Gautam looks back on the accident as a simple twist of fate as much as anything. As a 14-year-old, he had been flying a kite from the rooftop of his house when it got caught in a set of 11,000-volt power lines.

He yanked on the kite, attempting to pull it free and the rest is history.

“The only thing I remember after that is waking up in the hospital room,” says Gautam, quite candidly.

“They told me I’d lost my arms. Of course it was a shock, but the entire time I was in the hospital my family and friends were standing around me crying and I didn’t understand why.”

Living life differently, not less

Gautam chose to live life differently rather than live it less.

When asked the obvious question — how do you climb a mountain with no arms? — Gautam explains matter of factly that he’ll do it with the help of Sherpa, his teeth and feet. He has several expert mountain guides who have worked with him on the Yala climb.

“I’m not afraid of heights, so that helps too,” says Gautam, who says his passion for the mountains is one of the reasons his family has settled in Calgary.

Gautam, says that as long as the weather cooperates and his training in the local Rocky Mountains goes well, he should have no problem summiting the world’s most revered and storied mountain top.

Mountain-climbing, learning, inspiring aside, Gautam’s true passion is children and if he can help improve the lives of a few needy kids, it’ll mean more to him than summiting all the mountains in the world.

— Steven Noble, June 16, 2010