COLUMN: Weekly Musings. The Body We are Gifted – Lessons from a Mountaineer

DAR ES SALAAM: The Almighty entrusts us with our bodies. We cultivate strength and fitness not because they guarantee life tomorrow, but because good health enables us to live today with greater vitality, resilience, and purpose. The true measure of life lies not merely on its duration, but in the fullness with which it is lived.

Physical fitness enhances the quality of life. It reduces the risk of many diseases, increases physical and mental resilience and expands the limits of human capability. A healthy body allows us to worship our Creator with greater vigour, provide more effectively for our families, serve our communities with greater energy, and endure life’s hardships with composure and dignity. Yet fitness has its limits. It cannot eliminate uncertainty, nor can it prevent accidents. Mortality is the one condition shared equally by the strongest, and the weakest.

When the human body is treated with respect—through disciplined exercise, balanced nutrition, restorative sleep, and thoughtful living—it becomes capable of extraordinary achievements. Few individuals illustrate this more vividly than experienced mountaineers, whose accomplishments reveal the remarkable harmony between physical conditioning, mental fortitude, technical skill, and unwavering human determination.

A mountaineer who ascends the world’s highest peaks only does so after years of meticulous preparation, physiological adaptation, relentless discipline, and psychological resilience. Every muscle, every heartbeat, and every breath reflects a body refined through deliberate effort. The mountaineer becomes living evidence of the body’s extraordinary capacity to adapt, endure, and transcend what once appeared to be impossible.

Nirmal Puja (43), was among the greatest mountaineers of the modern era. Renowned for his courage, relentless work ethic, and seemingly limitless endurance, he continually challenged both himself and the world’s most formidable mountains.

Nirmal began his climbing journeys in 2012. He first summitted Mount Everest in 2016 and returned to the summit five more times. In 2019, he created a world record by climbing all fourteen peaks above 8,000 metres in six months and six days, shattering a record that stood for nearly eight years. He later repeated the feat without the use of supplemental oxygen, an accomplishment that elevated him to the highest echelon of alpine history. He was also the first man with his Nepalese team to climb K2, and that to, in winter conditions.

Behind these extraordinary achievements lay a level of discipline that few could imagine. During periods of intensive preparation, he would rise at 2.00 A.M., carry a 65-kilogramme load while running 20 kilometres, complete his regular training during the day, repeat another 20-kilometre, 65-kilogramme loaded run in the evening, and then finish with 60 miles on a stationary bicycle before returning home late at night. He maintained this rigorous routine for about six months, demonstrating not merely physical strength but exceptional mental discipline.

A few days before his final climb, Nirmal wrote with characteristic humility: “Broad Peak, I ask for nothing but safe passage up and back down. I take zero mountains for granted. Not one.” Those words now carry profound significance. While attempting Broad Peak, Pakistan’s 8,051 metres mountain – the world’s twelfth-highest mountain – he was caught in a devastating avalanche that claimed his life and those of his companions. This brought to an abrupt end his ambitious ‘Hat Trick Project’ through which he hoped to climb all fourteen 8,000-metre peaks and the seven summits three times.

For perspective, Broad Peak rises more than 2,100 metres higher than Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, whose summit reaches 5,895 metres above sea level. Kilimanjaro climbing tours normally take six to eight days. This is the only mountain under 8000 metres that Nirmal climbed on 25th August, 2022. He completed the fast ascent and descent in a single day treating this as a light break from his intense high-altitude mountaineering. He wanted to paraglide down from the mountain to Moshi town but weather conditions did not allow for this.

He regularly led commercial trips to the summit of the Kilimanjaro Mountain as part of his training and seven Summits projects. His achievements were never about speed or breaking records. They embodied patience, perseverance, meticulous planning, calculated risks and extraordinary resilience. Crossing multiple countries, surviving some of the world’s deadliest mountains and enduring unpredictable weather in unforgiving environments demanded exceptional judgement and humility.

Nirmal Purja’s death presents one of life’s most compelling paradoxes. He was a man whose body represented the pinnacle of human conditioning and yet his life ended not because his body failed him, but because nature asserted its overwhelming power.

The lesson, therefore, is not that physical fitness is incapable of extending life, but that it was never intended to guarantee it. The body is one of the Almighty’s greatest gifts, but it is also a temporary trust. It deserves our care because it is the instrument through which we experience life not because it can shield us from death. Mortality is the inevitable destiny of all humanity.

The measure of a life is therefore not found in how long the body endures, but in how faithfully, wisely and compassionately it is used while it is gifted to us on earth.