Emerging from nowhere, without any pedigree as a mountaineer, Nirmal Purja burst into the world of Himalayanism like a hurricane, laughing at the story of the conquest of the 14 highest mountains on the planet. It was in 2019 and it took him 189 days to climb all the eight thousand. Five years later, her fame continues to enjoy good health, but a good number of controversies ruin her peace, the last of them extremely serious: two women claimed on May 31 in an article published by The New York Times that they were victims. of sexual assaults by Nims, as this former soldier of the elite Gurkha units of the United Kingdom army, also a member of the Order of the British Empire, is known. The American April Leonardo and the Finnish Lotta Hintsa claim to have been subjected to sexual assaults by the leader of the Elite Exped agency, who has denied the veracity of the accusations.
Nirmal Purja is a calculated, miraculous marketing product, a man with an idea: to make a profit and lead the growing empowerment of Nepal’s Sherpas to take over the mountain climbing business in the Himalayas. At the head of a guiding company called Elite Exped, but without holding any guiding title (in Nepal there are, however, professional guides with UIAGM certification, the same one held by European guides), it can be said that Nims’ plan is a resounding success, so much so that none of the controversies it entails have altered its roadmap or the strength of its company.
Beyond his business skills, the excessive admiration of a part of the international mountaineering community is striking, including Reinhold Messner himself, the first man to climb the 14 eight-thousanders (between 1970 and 1986) almost always with a style and ethics ahead of their time. Nims, on the other hand, is neither more nor less than what the Netflix documentary The 14 Eight Thousands offers: There is nothing impossible, that is, a man with a mission, a tremendous ego, the mountains as an enemy and no type of sympathy for the history of mountaineering, for its ethical codes.
Purists were quick to point out the modus operandi of Purja and his team: bottled oxygen where no one usually uses it, helicopter approaches, supplying fields from the air, Sherpas opening trails, equipping the route and working in dangerous conditions. All for the race. In Purja’s speed record there was never a hint of avant-garde Himalayanism. But yes a plan. It also does not seem to matter that analyst Eberhard Jurgalski demonstrated that the former military man did not set foot on the true summit of Manaslu in 2019 (he returned in 2021), which invalidated his speed record, held by Norwegian Kristin Harila since 2023: three months and one day.
Purja’s next big move was to open the window of possible scenarios: Why not take clients to Annapurna, the most dangerous eight thousand on the planet? At its wheel, on April 16, 2021, a total of 68 people were registered at its summit, almost as many as in 70 years since its conquest. Direct witness, the legendary mountaineer Marc Batard denounced a scenario as dangerous as it was meaningless: Nepalese agencies poorly equip the route and guide clients unable to separate themselves from bottled oxygen, much less the fixed ropes. Today, Annapurna remains on the agenda of several Nepalese companies.
Purja’s new colonizing objective was the Pakistani Karakoram, where K2 stands out, a place with hardly any business competition. There, in the winter of 2021, Nims and nine other climbers from Nepal completed the first ascent of the second highest mountain on the planet in the middle of winter. K2 stood out as the last eight thousand that had not been climbed in winter, an ideal advertising claim. All the credit went to Purja.
Nims and the rest of Nepal’s agencies copy the Western model of mountain exploitation without correcting any of the drifts of mountain tourism that has existed in Europe for a century. Helicopters everywhere, dirt in the mountains, clients without any autonomy or capacity… the strategy is very simple: whoever pays a lot of money has the right to the Sherpa steamroller that turns into a highway what was once a trail reserved for dedicated mountaineers.
Nirmal Purja feeds his myth on his social networks, with more than two million followers on Instagram whom he instructs with enormous doses of virile pride and a mantra: nothing is impossible if you think positively. One of the lines of action of his guide company is to encourage the female public to join his expeditions. For example, in 2018 only 16% of the summits on Everest were female, compared to 24% in 2022, and analysts attribute this to the Nirmal Purja phenomenon. Now no one dares to venture what will become of his popularity after the complaint he faces for alleged sexual assaults.
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