He Lost Both Legs In Afghanistan Then Climbed Every Major Peak On Earth!
On April 17, 2010, Hari Budha Magar was serving as a Gurkha soldier with the first battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles in Afghanistan when he stepped on an improvised explosive device and lost both legs above the knee. He spent three years in rehabilitation at his lowest point telling himself it would be okay if he died, before choosing to live for his family and reaching for an ambition he had carried since childhood: climbing Mount Everest. He summited Everest on May 19, 2023, becoming the first double above-knee amputee in history to reach the top of the world, and then kept going. On January 6, 2026, Hari stood on the summit of Mount Vinson in Antarctica in temperatures of minus 25 degrees Celsius after a three-day climb through fierce winds and vertical icy slopes, completing the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on all seven continents, and becoming the only double above-knee amputee ever to do it. He now holds five Guinness World Records and has been named a Guinness World Records Icon.
The road to those summits was not only physical. When Hari first announced his intention to climb Everest, Nepal's government had a law banning double amputees and visually impaired people from climbing any mountain over 6,500 meters in the country. He lobbied, campaigned at the United Nations in Geneva, and when that did not work, filed a case in the Nepal Supreme Court and won, clearing the legal path for himself and every future climber in similar circumstances. Along the way, fundraising proved equally difficult: people were reluctant to sponsor him, he said, because they simply did not believe he could do it. He proved them wrong on every mountain, adapting his prosthetics, his kit, and his route for each climb with the help of his team. Guinness World Records named him an Icon not just for the records themselves but for what he said the mission was really about: changing perceptions about disability and giving hope to people who are told their situation defines the limits of what they can do. Hari said receiving the recognition felt bigger than climbing mountains, and that his message to anyone who has been told something is impossible is that if you adapt your life according to your time, situation, and ability, you can make anything happen.
