The man coming back from the hard mountain trip is a wiser being, calmer and radiating inside. I'd say momentary liberated.

I like to describe Himalayan climbing as a kind of art of suffering. Just pushing, pushing yourself to your limits.

The most significant dimension of freedom is the freedom from one's own ego - in other words, from the feeling that I am the center of everything

Whenever a climber leaves the known paths, he enters an area without rules or routines... The only advice comes from deep inside the self.

The mountains are exceptional places for, as the natural environment is concerned, they are the concentration of the wildest possible variety of all natural phenomena and forms. They are somehow a concentration of the truth of nature or even I'd say its essence.

In this way the climber faces his second deadly threat. The first is naturally the risk of killing the. Second is immersed in the deceitfulness of mental and believing that you are worth as much as the public image.

Every type of evil we've got in us is the result of that one true illness of the human mind - that is, of being self-centered.