We made good speed until we hit another bottleneck. It didn’t seem so bad at first with only about 10 people in front of us but the queue barely moved. As I got closer, we saw the problem. There was a steep rocky section, with a slight overhang. It was taking people forever to cross that section. I remember there was a guy just staring at it and not doing a thing. Even worse, the guy behind was not shouting at him. We had already been stuck there for more than 20 mins and my feet were getting cold. I lost my patience and just yelled asking him to either move up or move out so others can go. Eventually, he made it up. It was certainly not an easy section but some of the guys in the front were just outright terrible. Fortunately, I had a total of over 40 mins of waiting time to mentally prepare myself and climb through the section a bit more gracefully.

Summit pic with the banner

By the time, I was over, I could see a queue of over 100 people behind me. This was going to take some time. I was just glad I was in the front of the queue. Once we crossed the rocky section, the terrain was much better. The slow rocky section distributed the queue of climbers ahead with big enough gaps. This helped us keep a good pace. I was starting to feel confident that I would make it. The sun started to come up and I could see the South Summit. I could see the shadow of Everest on the left. Just before the South summit, I overtook Ted and another climber. That took so much energy out of me that I fell right on the South Summit and had to take a minute’s break. As soon as I lifted my head, I could see it.

Summit pic with my Sherpa (his 4th attempt and first time to the summit)

The image that I had seen so many times in books and photos, the path to the summit. Everything came back to me. Until then, I had briefly forgotten where Hillary step was, where South summit was and how far they all were from the summit. Now everything was clear. I could see the top. I know I was going to make it. There were still a couple of tough steep sections, but I had absolutely no doubt I will make it. Hillary step wasn’t easy and steep, but we made it through just fine. After that, it was a smooth climb up. I could see about 15 people at the summit as I was slowing inching my way up through the final section. As I was about 5 mins away, I could see the guys leaving the summit, most of them were from the Tibet side. That’s when it struck me that there are people coming from the other side as well on that day.

My favourite summit pic

As I reached the peak, I had maybe a single tear struggling to come out but mostly I was in a state of disbelief. I made it, I actually made it to the top of the world, above the clouds after 55 days of a constant adrenalin rush. Here I am, this is it and its over. We were the only ones at the summit. I got my SLR camera out and it wasn’t working. I got my Canon D10 out and it wasn’t working either. Not good. Fortunately, I had spare batteries that I had kept against my body, nice and warm. Removed my gloves and changed the battery for the SLR, still not working. Did the same for the Canon, and finally, it worked. Phew!! My hands were freezing by this time, and just at that time, a climber from the Tibetan side came up. We asked him to take a photo of me and my Sherpa. Then, I took a few photos of Kaldin and he of me. But, our hands were freezing badly that we had to stop taking photos and put our mittens back on. My hands were so cold that when we were taking photos of the banner, I thought I was holding the banner firmly in my hand but it just flew right out of my hands. The winds were super strong. I looked out to see if there were others were coming up but the next person was atleast 15mins away. It was too long to wait; we were running out of Oxygen and it was getting cold. We had to leave and we did.

Another summit pic with the banner