Unprepared, How I Survived Extreme Cold and Hunger at 15,000 Feet?: And How YOU Can Overcome Extremely Challenging Situations in Life?
Book Details
Author(s)Anil Yadav
ISBN / ASINB00T2TRCA6
ISBN-13978B00T2TRCA6
Sales Rank900,856
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
What you’ll read?
The twists & turns and comic errors that sent a trekking expedition horribly wrong, almost proving fatal for the 25-strong group.
What you’ll learn?
In the face of extremely challenging situations, physical endurance and skills alone can take you only so far. Instead, a structured response which takes into account psychological aspects as well can better help you tide such situations. (I’ve devoted a quarter of the book on how to structure this response, most of which is backed by research and real-life examples.)
This book is about a 24-hour story, the story of an adventure gone wrong which almost killed us. At 6 AM on October 6, twenty-five of us started the trek from our base camp at Sangla valley, and within few hours veered off the schedule because of few critical decisions that went wrong. That day, with few options in the wilderness of Himalayas, most of us stretched the extremities of our physical and mental endurance to set new benchmarks for ourselves. That day, we walked a distance we never thought we could. That day, we gained a height we never thought we could.
What made matters worse, though, was comedy of errors that we committed which almost starved, froze us to death. On the night of October 6, some of us braved a temperature of - 7 oC without sleeping bags and, equally important, food. Despite being an average trekker, I competed well with the best, and by the end of the ordeal was less bruised¬, physically and psychologically, than most. After the trek, as a measure of self-assessment, I dissected not just the events of this trek, but also other difficult situations that I’d faced from time to time, and realized that extremely-challenging, unprecedented situations can be better handled with a more structured response, which can reduce the difference between the best and the average. It’s worked for me on several occasions, and it can for you. This is what I want to share with you, besides the story of this trek.
The trekkers in this group were recent recruits into higher civil services in India. In all, 248 of us went to twelve different treks, and this – Rupin Pass – was the toughest of them all in terms of altitude and endurance required. When I thought of writing this book, I went through the backgrounds of the trekkers in our group in detail. What I found was spooky, to the extent of shocking me. There were just too many coincidences among us, for which there was no apparent rationale. It prompted me to talk to some of them. Oblivious of these coincidences, they answered my questions patiently, and somewhere in those answers, I found the rationale, or rather characteristics, that I knew existed, but wasn’t sure what it was. These are overarching characteristics which explain the success of the members of this group in not just overcoming the extreme odds of this trek, but also achieving disproportionately high number of successes in different fields before and after the trek. Till now, I had come across such rationales only in inspirational quotes, leadership stories, and motivational speeches, but never experienced them. The last chapter covers this underlying rationale.
The twists & turns and comic errors that sent a trekking expedition horribly wrong, almost proving fatal for the 25-strong group.
What you’ll learn?
In the face of extremely challenging situations, physical endurance and skills alone can take you only so far. Instead, a structured response which takes into account psychological aspects as well can better help you tide such situations. (I’ve devoted a quarter of the book on how to structure this response, most of which is backed by research and real-life examples.)
This book is about a 24-hour story, the story of an adventure gone wrong which almost killed us. At 6 AM on October 6, twenty-five of us started the trek from our base camp at Sangla valley, and within few hours veered off the schedule because of few critical decisions that went wrong. That day, with few options in the wilderness of Himalayas, most of us stretched the extremities of our physical and mental endurance to set new benchmarks for ourselves. That day, we walked a distance we never thought we could. That day, we gained a height we never thought we could.
What made matters worse, though, was comedy of errors that we committed which almost starved, froze us to death. On the night of October 6, some of us braved a temperature of - 7 oC without sleeping bags and, equally important, food. Despite being an average trekker, I competed well with the best, and by the end of the ordeal was less bruised¬, physically and psychologically, than most. After the trek, as a measure of self-assessment, I dissected not just the events of this trek, but also other difficult situations that I’d faced from time to time, and realized that extremely-challenging, unprecedented situations can be better handled with a more structured response, which can reduce the difference between the best and the average. It’s worked for me on several occasions, and it can for you. This is what I want to share with you, besides the story of this trek.
The trekkers in this group were recent recruits into higher civil services in India. In all, 248 of us went to twelve different treks, and this – Rupin Pass – was the toughest of them all in terms of altitude and endurance required. When I thought of writing this book, I went through the backgrounds of the trekkers in our group in detail. What I found was spooky, to the extent of shocking me. There were just too many coincidences among us, for which there was no apparent rationale. It prompted me to talk to some of them. Oblivious of these coincidences, they answered my questions patiently, and somewhere in those answers, I found the rationale, or rather characteristics, that I knew existed, but wasn’t sure what it was. These are overarching characteristics which explain the success of the members of this group in not just overcoming the extreme odds of this trek, but also achieving disproportionately high number of successes in different fields before and after the trek. Till now, I had come across such rationales only in inspirational quotes, leadership stories, and motivational speeches, but never experienced them. The last chapter covers this underlying rationale.
