"Sherpas find sponsors. How about us? Nothing awaits me from Pakistan ",Says Muhammad Ali Sadpara,A beautifully penned article by Dominik Szczepański

A beautifully penned article by Dominik Szczepański about our very own Muhammad Ali Sadpara. Please read the translated version and get to know his life better. Believe me, it hasn't been easy.

Article By: Dominik Szczepański

"Sherpas find sponsors. How about us? Nothing awaits me from Pakistan ".

Everyone is writing about Nepalese - and cool! - but, attention, K2 is in Pakistan. And Pakistan also has climbers. One of them is just trying to get K2 with his son Sajid and Icelander John Snorri Sigurjonsson - they have already taken out some of the equipment to camp III.

Yes, winter under K2 continues, Nepalese peaked, but the rest will look for their chance. I keep my fingers crossed for Ali, a stonemason from Sadpara village - that's why many call him Ali Sadpara.

He is to Pakistan, who Tenzing Norgay was to Nepal Simone Moro said about him. I met Ali five years ago at Nanga Parbat base. His photo - probably for the first time - was hanging from the Mess Hall, Kitchen tent, next to photos of the western climbers. Ali stopped being an anonymous high altitude porter. Well, maybe his name sometimes rained in the communications of the expedition managers.

"I'm thankful for Alex Txikon and Daniele Nardi. They treat me like a normal climber. This is new to me because we are generally in the shadows," he said.

He reminisced about Polish expeditions for which he worked at Broad Peak (2008/2009 and 2010/2011), and then at Gasherbrum I. There he handicapped the mountain until the last camp, from which Janusz Go łąb and Adam Bielecki started the summit attack. He got frostbite. He had some of his fingers amputated at the hospital. If he hadn't lost them, who knows, maybe Nanga Parbat would have been captured not in 2016, but the year before. Guess who turned 300 meters from the top then? Ali Sadpara. We'll be right back to that attack.

Feza breastfeeding Ali until he was six years old. He was the last of her twelve children. She was trembling for her son because she had previously buried eight of his siblings. Diseases that no one in the area could cure were nothing new in the northern Pakistan Sadpara village. Mother's milk gave me the strength to conquer mountains ". said the journal "Alpinist ".

Since he was little, he went to the Deosai Plateau to get animal feed; he cut plants, tied them into sheaves, which got heavier and heavier over the years; they finally weighed 40 kg. He carried them on his back to a village two kilometers away, dropped them, and returned for another one.

He was nine when the flood destroyed Sadpara village. Nineteen, when uncle went to Fatima's parents to pass on a marriage proposal. They agreed, and soon after Alemu and Fatima a son -Sajid was born.

Ali needed the money, and the most he could earn as a porter - day-to-day for carrying a 25-kilogram load under K2, Broad Peak, or Gasherbrum was then $25. The one-way road took six, seven days. Most Pakistanis were coming back slightly, but happy was the one who had something to carry the other way.

At first, he didn't understand why nobody wanted to carry kerosene canisters - after all, he thought, it was a graceful package. Maybe it was that some porters smoke cigarettes and are afraid to carry a flammable liquid on their backs? After the first time, he knew. The overflowing kerosine in the canister made it difficult to catch balance, turning a week of trekking into a drunken march.

Then a Pakistani army truck came to his village. Soldiers were looking for porters to report loads to post offices lying on Pakistan's northern border, Siachen glacier, called the highest battlefield in the world - both sides, among the high mountains, soldiers of Pakistan and India strengthened years ago. Ali was scared like never in his life. The other night a mortar bullet killed two of his colleagues. Ali slept in the tent next door. "After what I had been through on Siachen, I wasn't afraid anymore he said.

His mother persuaded him to abandon the mountains, stay home, and take care of the potatoes. - If foreigners want to spend money on climbing in Pakistan, why not help them? - he tried to explain to her.

For real he started climbing in 2006. That's when he got his first eight-thousand winner - Gaszerbrum II. He then handled the mountain for a commercial trip, arrived at camp IV with a heavy backpack, and fell asleep tired. They left without him. When he woke up, the tent was empty. He went after them. His forefront wasn't working, but the moon was shining brightly, so he followed the tracks. He ended up reaching the top as second, just behind the leader of the expedition. The same year alone, Spantik took a new route (7027 m above sea level). A year later, he worked for the Russians during a trip to the west wall of K2. At the top of Nanga Parbat stood in the summer in 2008 and 2009. Early in 2015 just before the summit on Nanga - then at this time of the year, Daniele Nardi offered him new shoes, number 42. Ali climbed earlier in the old, number 43.5.

"Saw new shoes and made a mistake. People should know it's my fault, because of me we didn't climb to the top then" - he explained to me a year later, early 2016 - It's all because of these shoes. And the lack of the heater I needed it because I lost some of my fingers on a trip to Gasherbrum I. So I told Alex and Daniele to buy a heater. It cost 150 euros. But they didn't. And during the peak attack, I frosted my fingers. This made me angry and I made it the wrong way. I told Alex and Daniele that I had to go back because my fingers are not good but for them to go to the top. Showed the right way. They didn't want to. I said I'll be fine, no problem with me. They said they won't go without me. It's a true partnership", Ali said.

I then asked him if anything would change if he entered Nanga Parbat in winter. - Probably nothing unless someone from Europe is interested in me. Sherpas find sponsors. How about us? Nothing awaits me from Pakistan. Who's interested in climbers here? People work hard, know nothing about Himalaism. I will come home, work in the woods, pick fruit, milk goats. In the summer maybe I'll work on some commercial trips. Money is not the most important thing to me. If they were, I'd move to the city and not live in the countryside.

I started coming down from base near Nanga at the end of January, a month later Ali was already on top. During the summit attack, he chose a different route than his partners Simone Moro, Alex Txikon, and Tamara Lunger ( turned 90 meters from the top). He was faster than them, had a moment to himself on top. He was also right - this entry didn't change much in his life. He didn't find any sponsors. After the expeditions, he returns to Sadpara. As he says, he then remembers the life he was meant to live: digging potatoes, fixing walls, patching roofs. When asked about dreams, he answers that his wife would like to buy a sewing machine and present a winter entrance to K2. To this day, he has scored seven eight-thousanders.