Project Himalaya | 2004-2012 Expedition Dispatches

[The hold of Everest] 6 months on by Ian Rogers

When I returned home from Everest and Nepal in June, I honestly believed that I'd find it quite easy to assimilate back into the "real world". I thought I'd return to normality pretty quickly. How wrong I was! I had been warned of course by those that know these things, yet I never, ever, imagined just how hard it would be to leave this mountain behind and to move on. Climbing Everest is an experience like no other. So far removed is it from our everyday existence that it takes time for everything to sink in, for the mind and body to recover and grow strong again.

Everest changes people. New friendships, new lessons, new perspectives on life. You learn a great deal about yourself. It is an extraordinary journey of discovery. It's been said that "the man who has been to the mountains is never the same again. That other summit - the summit of the mind - is no less formidable and no easier to climb". How true. Nothing can compare to the feelings of sheer awe and wonder as you enter the Western Cwm, or ascend out of the darkness of night and into the rays of dawn lighting the upper ridges of the mountain. Such memories are seared into the very fabric of my being and will stay with me forever.

Yes, the heartache of coming so close to the summit of my dreams is still there. The raw emotion still palpable. Yet as the old saying goes, "it's better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all". I remember, as my sight began to blur, trying to see through the haze the mesmerising curve of the Earth. But as Everest climber Ellen Miller once so beautifully put it, "what I glimpsed instead was perhaps the curve of my own soul".

"Tujeche Chomolungma". Thank you Everest.

Project Himalaya expedition dispatches

[The hold of Everest] 6 months on by Ian Rogers