A True Story: Pushing my Limits

Kashmir's Death Valley

I was very close to serious injury, perhaps even death, had I not been rescued by a mule. 

Sheltering from the wind among the large boulders in Kashmir, India, I could hardly move.

I was quickly turning hypothermic in the high-altitude desert of the Indian Himalayas.

Lying on the ground, covered in dust and dirt, I waited for help.

I set my compact camera to video mode and recorded a short message for whoever found me.

While the contents of that message remain private, I still keep it on my computer hard drive to remind me of how close I was to death.

I felt like I had run a marathon and couldn’t catch my breath. For every step forward, I needed to stop to take a dozen deep breaths.

I had to stop, balancing heavily on my trekking poles for support.  I had to lie down, before I collapsed.

Acute Mountain Sickness, or AMS, can be deadly if you don’t know what you are up against.

It can hit you at altitudes of only 2300-meters. I was at double that. The lower pressure of the oxygen in the air at altitude is the danger.

I didn’t have any swelling in my limbs or face, or a nosebleed. Yet. My appetite was still huge, and I was sleeping very well with no headaches at all.  I was fighting fit, until that morning.

Now I couldn’t move my body. Despite months of training and a couple of weeks of acclimatizing to the altitude, AMS had struck me down when I least expected it. And I now had a pounding headache.

I could be dying from fluid on my lungs, hence my great difficulty in breathing. Or perhaps I just had a brain swelling?

The only way to avoid AMS is to descend to a lower altitude. And the only solution was to trek over the next mountain pass and down again. But I couldn’t move. And my guide was about half my size.

So he had gone ahead to look for one of our expedition’s mules that had overtaken us.

That mule was to be my saviour. The smelly, flea-ridden animal would carry me to safety.

The hour-and-a-half it took him to return with the mule was possibly the longest and most worrying 90-minutes of my life. I owe that mule.

It’s good to push your limits and feel alive.

But take notice when your body starts to misbehave. It’s a warning that your adventure may soon take a serious turn. Always have a buddy on hand to help out. Or a mule.