An IED tore off ex-Gurkha Hari Budha Magar's legs but the hero fought back and conquered Everest

NEAR the roof of the world, they were already writing his obituary - but Hari Budha Magar had other ideas. High on Everest, in the dark, out of oxygen, Hari was a dead man as far as the people who loved him were concerned. A double above the knee amputee, after an IED tore off both his legs in Afghanistan, he had fought back against all odds to conquer Everest. But now a broken satellite call over a screaming wind had been misheard, and the men below believed that for all his bravery, hope was lost. Hari said: "They were sitting in their tents, planning what to say, because they thought we were already dead.” Out of oxygen at more than eight thousand metres he understood exactly what that meant, saying: "You can offer a man a million pounds for his oxygen at that altitude and he will refuse. “Money is worthless when you are about to die." Hari's determination and will to survive was formed from an early age. Born in a cowshed in a Nepali village on 30 July 1979, his birth was difficult and he came into the world silent, with his parents feeling he wasn't going to live. But the old woman who delivered him said: "Of course he's alive. Full of energy! He will be a climber this one, I can feel it." Hari's obsession started in a hot classroom, when a teacher paced the front of the room and asked: "What does Sagarmatha mean to you?" It is Nepali name for Everest. "My mind exploded with questions: What about me climbing? How do people climb? How would it feel to stand on top?" Hari said. But he put his dreams on hold to join the British Army, completing its gruelling Gurkha selection in December 1998. As a Gurkha, he served for more than ten years, rising through the ranks. On the night before his company flew into Helmand in Afhghanistan, he made himself a promise - to serve the Crown, protect his platoon, and fight to his last breath if he had to. On the 17 April 2010, in the Nahr-e-Seraj district of Helmand, the work in hand was the unglamorous business of rebuilding, not fighting. He said: "I walked across a poppy field to help repair a village's well: civilian infrastructure work, not a combat operation.” Then there was a bang and the world tilted onto its side. When the dust settled and he forced his neck to bend, the damage was plain. "My right leg, it just isn't there. It's gone," he said. And where his left leg should have been there was only "a dangling of bone and skin." Lying in the dirt, he thought: "Am I going to survive? Will I be able to see my family again?" He was the tenth man in a single-file patrol when he stepped on the device, and for a few desperate minutes no one could reach him, while the ground around him was swept for more hidden bombs. Hari’s own men applied field dressings, and 18 minutes after the blast he was carried on an improvised stretcher to an American rescue helicopter. Hari came home to Britain without his legs, but the mental toll was as bad as the physical. First came the surgery and the slow repair - a month in Selly Oak hospital in Birmingham and then three and a half years of rehabilitation at Headley Court in Surrey. But PTSD had taken hold. He said: "I wake up in cold sweats. I hear the thunderous BANG! of the explosion, replaying again and again and again in my head.” For months he sat in a wheelchair by the window. The only relief was drinking and he fell into alcoholism. He said: "The only time I felt anything was after the whisky. The emptiness was the worst part. For the first time in my life I felt like I had no tribe, no cause, nothing filled in the calendar. I had no purpose." What pulled him back was a single reckless afternoon in the summer of 2012, when the army's Battle Back scheme offered wounded veterans a day's skydiving. Hari signed up for the bleakest of reasons. He said: "Half of my body is gone, if the other goes then it's the end of my story. At Netheravon Airfield in Wiltshire, he was fully prepared for the parachute to fail. At the open door of the plane, 15,000 feet up, he remembered an old Gurkha saying: "It's better to die than be a coward." And he jumped out into the sky. He said: "The first time after my injury, I felt I was free like a bird.” After that, Hari threw himself into adaptive sport, won medals, kayaked around the Isle of Wight and, on ski trips in the Alps, he began to dream of climbing Everest again. His own government tried to stop him. Nepal brought in a ban on double amputees attempting its highest peaks. "It was clear that what now awaited me was not a mountain climb at all, it was another challenge," he said. "It was a fight." The fight went all the way to Nepal's Supreme Court and the ban was overturned - meaning he was free to take on Everest. Hari’s ascent had been tougher than the normal climb, as his disability meant he had to spend three times as much energy as an able-bodied climber. The Hillary Step at 28,700 feet nearly finished him. He said: "My lungs were on fire. I almost collapsed." Above it, the summit finally showed itself through his frozen goggles. Hari crawled the last of it, stopping every step to breathe, before planting his palms on the top of the world on 19 May 2023. He said: "Tears spilt down my cheeks like waterfalls and froze like stalagmites hanging from my eyelashes. I wanted to let every human no longer look upon persons with disability as pitiful or limited or weak." On his descent, the oxygen ran out, the torch died, the water and the food froze solid. His guide, Mingma, gave away his own oxygen and stumbled into Camp Four half dead. And a Sherpa, Pasang, who had never been that high in his life, climbed up through the night carrying two bottles and a flask of hot water to find them. Hari said: "It was warm and it was wet and it meant we were going to live." The climb, top to bottom, had taken 25 hours. In 2024, he was awarded an MBE in the King's Birthday Honours for services to disability awareness, and later that year he won a Pride of Britain Award and was invited with his family to Downing Street. Everest was never the end of it. Hari has since completed the Seven Summits, the highest peak on every continent - including Antarctica., the world's first double above the knee amputee to do so. Hari, now 47, is honest about how hard ordinary life remains, but he keeps going - determined to set an example of bravery and leadership. "I might not change the whole world," he said, "but if I can help just one person change their life for the better, I will be happy." *Conquering Dreams by Hari Budha Magar (Mirror Books) is published August 27th, priced £16.99