A Gurkha soldier turned UK Special Boat Service operator, Nirmal Purja rewrote the limits of high-altitude mountaineering. In 2019 he summited all fourteen of the world's 8,000-metre peaks in six months and six days — a record that stood until 2023, and that had previously taken climbers the better part of a decade.

In January 2021, he led an all-Nepali team to the first-ever winter ascent of K2. Through the Nimsdai Foundation, he pushed to clean the world's highest mountains and to put Nepali and Sherpa climbers at the center of a story too often told without them.