CARPE DIEM AND LOST HORIZONS

As they walked off towards the distant peak of Nanga Parbat (one of the world’s 8,000 peaks) my heart sunk into a deep and uncertain pool of loneliness. I wanted to be there with them, attempting for the third time to make a first ascent of the mountain by the dangerous Mazeno Ridge route (which two of the group would finally do 18 years later). Unfortunately I was severely ill, and that was simply not possible.

This was some 25-years ago, and I’d been sent to Pakistan along with a bunch of the world’s top mountaineers, to guide them by mountain bike across the Deosai Plateau, the highest continuous such plateau in the world–which, as far as we know, was un-ridden at that