c u on top - satyabrata dam

Fifty four years back at the age of 4, standing with my dad beneath a towering deodar, at China Peak (2611m), a well-known view point just above the lacustrine hill town of Nainital, I had seen with my eyes wide open my very first and my biggest dream – to travel the world and climb every mountain. We were there to watch the sun rise from across the Tibetan Plateau.  Nothing had changed in 54 years It was a cold dawn in April, the eastern sky just beginning to turn pink and while my restless eyes flitted around my dad stood silent. As the sky continued to brighten and the endless array of icy peaks to my North started punctuating the horizon, he raised his hand and pointed at Nanda Devi and said – this is the Himalaya, a part of your heritage and it is because of these mountains that you and I and this land exists. My dad was a man of few words. Yet these words drew my attention to the amazing spectacle unfolding right in front.  Slowly the sun rose further and the white summi...

  I have a friend, who has achieved some of the most coveted landmarks in the climbing adventure world. He is few years younger than I and on and off I have been his mental trainer and used to be his mentor and climbing instructor when he had just started his climbing. Just a day before, he messaged me and wanted to schedule a one on one mental training session. It seemed urgent so we met up virtually and spoke for nearly 2 hours. You will be surprised what transpired and why he wanted to talk to me. But first let me give you some of his achievements and lifestyle in a nutshell. He has completed the seven summits and Adventure Grand Slam challenge (climbing the highest peaks of all the seven continents and also skiing to the geographical North and South Poles) all in one attempt over a span of 3 years. I was his guide and leader in several of these climbs. He has also climbed five 8000m plus peaks besides Everest. Which means he has climbed 6 of the world’s 14 highest peaks s...

  I have often been asked, what is the single most important factor necessary to summit Mt Everest or any high and difficult mountain for that matter. All the things like right equipment, training, goal, experience, etc. are important yet would come to nothing without perseverance to persist. And I feel this applies to anything in life, be it in your profession, family, business, ideologies, etc. Like I have often said that everything begins with a dream, an idea, with a goal and then you must take action in pursuit of that goal and dream, but then if you do not persist and continue to persevere with your action then you won’t reach where you wish to; be it the summit of a mountain or the summit of your chosen dream. Without persistence all your dreams will be like a half baked cake or a half ripened mango. To see the fruition of our dreams there is no other way but being persistent. Now whatever I wrote above is a no-brainer, and many have said it before. And most o...

  At the tender age of ten and dare I say that being a naive child when I conjured up my ultimate dream to climb every mountain and to visit every country in the world (have failed so far on both counts) I had absolutely no idea how on earth would I fulfil either of these. Soon I realized that the former was downright impossible and improbable while the latter was nearly so. So I took every opportunity offered or created when none was forthcoming to do exactly that. To boldly climb mountains that are rarely climbed and to go wherever I could. I firmly belief that if we do pursue our dreams with single minded dedication and focus, where no obstacle seem to be so and where we listen to none except our own beating heart, then life does open incredible doors and bring us on a collision course with incredible people who would open those doors for us. Therefore I knew that if I never veered away from my dreams then no matter what, no matter when, they would surely begin to unravel ...

  I was recently interviewed in the USA, where one of the pertinent questions asked was – how do I define passion.   My single sentence answer was – passion is something that I do purely for the joy and sake of doing it.   And then I elaborated: when I do something without any ulterior or other motive, besides that of just doing it, then I am following my passion. In short, when I climb a mountain I am not doing it for fame, money, success, glory or anything at all, not even to reach the top. There is no other purpose within me other than just climbing the mountain. And this is also an offshoot of what we often term as living in the moment fully and unconditionally, we also call this meditation, we also call this pure love and we can combine all of these to define our passion.   But if you ask me, then my answer to what is passion is when I cannot find a reason for doing it yet I do it then I am truly following my passion. If I can define my reason and mo...

  As an individual, I like my own company above all and spend weeks, months at a stretch away from all human in high mountains and forests. I often climb big mountains solo, with very little on my back. I also free solo ice lines, frozen waterfalls, far from any human presence. And I am often asked why do I do it, since it is also very risky, dangerous and generally not done by many. Many free solo climbers do it once in a while. I do it more often.   Right from my childhood, from the time I took to the mountains, I was an introvert and just loved the majestic sky kissing icy peaks and the sprawling glaciers all to myself. The gaping crevasses didn’t scare me, rather drew me into their icy depths and the lofty summits ignited deep within an unquenchable thirst for those forlorn places. Places where no man has ever been before, or very few before me. I started climbing with people much elder to me in age and experience and I was fortunate to learn from some of the world’s l...

    Once in a while, especially when we don’t feel that things are going our way and we are not finding the spark or excitement in our life and somehow, despite our best efforts, happiness eludes us; I feel it is important to look deep within ourselves and ask few pertinent questions. Rather than running out to a therapist or to a friend. Because as I always insist, no one in this world should know you better than your own self. So everything must begin with your own self centered world and self analyzing thoughts.   So ask: why do I do what I do? Can you really answer this question with all honesty and devoid of anything else! Can you be totally honest with your own self where no one else is privy to, no one is going to see you there or judge you. You are the judge and jury and also the defendant and the prosecutor. Much of your life’s state (sad or happy) will depend upon that honest answer to the question: why do I do what I do?   And then once you fin...

  Few weeks ago, while delivering a corporate talk at Zurich, someone from the audience asked me, how can we keep our every day exciting and fresh, since that was one of the key messages of my talk. And I said that there are many ways of doing it, but one very obvious and easy method is to always try do something, every day, that you have never done before. It is obvious because a human brain has developed to such a stage of infinite capacity to assimilate and analyse that we need to keep feeding it with something new to keep it active and satiated. If we don’t feed it something new, be it an experience, ideas, etc then it soon starts getting bored and then we get addicted to things like tiktok or Insta, which offers us instant satiation often without any substance. And it is simple because anything new that we have never done or experienced before doesn’t have to be something challenging or even out of the world. It simply should be something that you, as an individual, have neve...

    Though I often talk about happiness and conduct happiness workshops, I do agree that there are times in all of our lives when the feeling of blue is not only true but perhaps necessary too. Now why do we call this feeling of sadness, being under, etc as blue! My online research threw up lots of different answers to the origin of this expression, yet there wasn’t a single universal consensus to its neonatal source. So, here’s my version, why feeling low is often referred as feeling blue: I am a die-hard romantic (no matter what the women of my life who have passed me by say) and my favourite colour is blue. I associate blue with the abundance of the day lit sky, to the vast bodies of water aka lakes, rivers, oceans, glaciers, all appearing blue as they reflect the azure sky above. I would like to believe, which happens to me too, though rarely do I feel blue, when I feel a bit down under, I walk up into nature, mostly mountains or a mountain lake or waterfall, or a gl...