Remembering Nims Purja: The Lessons We'll Never Forget

**Jake** (0:03)
Hi there, welcome along to another episode of High Performance. So we first started this podcast over seven years ago. And since that time, myself and Damian Hughes have had the privilege of speaking to hundreds and hundreds of the most incredible people on the planet. It's fair to say that many of them have impressed us or intrigued us or at times even changed us.
But there's probably only a couple of handfuls of people that have left a genuine indelible mark on the way that we live our lives and the way that we think. And we're about to talk about a man who did exactly that. And in so many ways, Damian, this is not an episode of High Performance that either of us would ever have wanted to record, is it?

**Damian** (0:43)
Yes, Jake.
This is an episode that we wish we weren't making. It's somebody that's been taken far too soon. It's the brilliant Nims Purja that we were looking off to speak to long before. His Fourteen Peaks documentary ever sort of catapulted him to worldwide renown. Unfortunately, this weekend, he was caught up in an avalanche in Pakistan, wherever his body was discovered.

**Jake** (1:07)
Indeed. So the world loses a man who brought so much energy, so much light, so much optimism, so much positivity. And I am so eternally grateful that we had the opportunity to speak to him on High Performance. And we're going to share some of the clips from our conversation with Nims, remarkably Damian. It was like five years ago that we had the chance to speak to him. Time flies by. And I think some people, some people might listen to this episode today and think, well, hold on, you spent an hour together five years ago. And yeah, we kept in touch. But it's hard to explain quite why when you record an episode of this show with someone, quite why you get that connection to them. Because it's not just talking to them for an hour. Like we're asking them to open themselves up to us. We're opening ourselves up to them.
And it's really interesting that we get a very deep, a very intense relationship with someone very quickly when you have these kinds of conversations. And I think that's why both of us, you know, we've been exchanging messages over the weekend. I think that's why both of us were sort of so deeply impacted really by the news as it emerged that Nims had sadly passed away on Broadpeak.

**Damian** (2:16)
Yeah, well, you know that phrase that we frequently use, Jake, that nothing you do is neutral. Everything sort of either enhances an environment you go into or it subtly erodes it. And I think what Nims was almost the perfect embodiment of somebody that just enhanced it, even when we did it remotely, his energy, his enthusiasm, his openness, just was so endearing that you could tell why, as a member of the Special Forces, after he'd been a member of the Gurkhas, he'd been such an invaluable member of that team because he just made them better. And we got a small glimpse of it in that hour of how he encouraged us to be better, people, communicators, and presenters. He has left an indelible mark on our lives. So, you know, heaven knows the impacts he's had on his wife and his children and those that knew him for a lot longer.

**Jake** (3:09)
And we're going to play some clips from the conversation and talk about them in just a moment. In some ways, Damian, I almost don't want to do this because hearing his voice is almost the hardest thing because you get reminded of the fact that it's not just the loss of his life. And we also must pay our tributes and our respects to the people that died with him on that mountain.
But it's kind of the loss of this energy source. And I know the world is a poorer place without him, but the world is absolutely a richer place for having had Nims Purja in it for the time that he was alive. What are your memories of that specific day? Because it was obviously recorded from a distance. He was in Nepal, we were, you were at home, I was at home. I'll tell you my vivid memories when he said something. I'm like, do you remember I stood up and put my arms in the air and went, you're just so inspiring. I just have this like memory of, like I don't know, man. I remember skipping out here and saying to Harriet and the kids, I've just recorded an episode that you need to listen to. Like Seb was only five at the time.