How Anurag Maloo Defied Death On Mount Annapurna

At an elevation of about 7,950 metres above sea level, Anurag Maloo could see Mount Annapurna’s pinnacle, now almost within reach. Annapurna stood gloriously, as a silent spectator to Maloo’s climb, marked by serrated edges and age-old vertiginous folds. Its contours rose and fell, as though mimicking some primal rhythm. The sun glowed brightly and the air was perilously thin. The wind howled. Around one in the afternoon, when Maloo was a mere 150 metres away from the summit, his lead guide, Chhepal Sherpa advised Maloo over the satellite phone to descend, well-aware that by late afternoon, the weather would worsen, making it harder to do so later.

Mount Annapurna holds the title of being the deadliest mountain to scale in the world. Situated in north-central Nepal, the colossal giant stretches towards the sky and looms at 8,091 metres above sea level. Its precarious terrain is notorious for blinding snowstorms and obliterating avalanches. Lashing winds and plumes of snow make Annapurna an arduous climb. Lack of oxygen, physical exhaustion and freezing temperatures can lead to acute mountain sickness (AMS) experienced by even the most advanced climbers. It manifests symptoms of disorientation, nausea, hallucinations and light-headedness. One wrong step and they can freefall into the unknown. The mountain is the tenth highest peak in the world with an alarming fatality rate (32%)—claiming one in every three mountaineers. In contrast, Mount Everest’s fatality rate is a mere 1.5%.

Maloo began his retreat after careful deliberation. It had been a tough decision to make, but he would push for the summit again in a few days, he reassured himself. In a span of three years, Maloo had successfully scaled over 10 peaks and passes. Annapurna, however, was his first over 8,000-metre giant.

Around 5.30 pm, he and his guide Dawa dai Sherpa, safely returned to Camp IV (located roughly at 6,850 metres). The two would spend the night there. After descending with measured steadiness, however, Maloo appeared visibly fatigued due to the continuous climbing; he had been nursing a terrible cough for days. “Every breath, every step was a heavy one,” Maloo later recalled. The next morning, on April 17, 2023, the pair began their descent further, crossing Camp III, before gradually inching towards Camp II. The stretch between the two camps is notoriously dangerous, marked by deep crevasses and seracs, and is prone to avalanches.

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That day, Brazilian mountaineer Moeses Fiamoncini was rappelling alongside Maloo. In a later interview, Fiamoncini recalled that the 33-year-old did not look too well during his descent. Maloo was hauling his wiry albeit tired body while crossing the famous Annapurna Couloir, when he accidentally grabbed a broken rope, which shouldn’t have been there. Gravity did the rest. He plummeted about 15 metres, slamming hard into the mountain’s icy blue façade, before sliding limply and vanishing into the mouth of a crevasse.

A flustered Fiamoncini called out into the vacuum with a growing sense of dread. “Hello? Can you hear me?” He was met with nothing but silence. Fiamoncini would later admit that he felt “there was no way Anurag could have survived that fall.”

Hours must have passed since he plunged about 70 metres deep into the ice cavity.

"Hello?" Maloo called into the freezing nothingness. The harried man helplessly looked around. There was no one. Nothing, except the imposing walls of the crevasse. High above from its gaping mouth, the sun glowed like a terrifying column of white light. There was no sound, except for Maloo’s panicked breathing. “I’m really hoping someone would come and rescue me,” he pleaded into his camera.

A crevasse, which in Maloo’s case was a bergschrund (German for ‘mountain cleft’), is a chasm formed when a glacier has advanced to the point where it pulls away from the mountain slope, creating a deathly breach.

For the next 72 hours, Maloo was lost in the wicked, windswept terrain—a lone speck in the belly of an ancient giant. He would remain lodged in the crevasse without food, water or sufficient oxygen. Memory of the moment he plummeted or the several hours he remained entombed in the crevasse, eludes Maloo. “I don’t remember any of it,” he told me. “My last memory was that I was crossing that section…” Maloo’s GoPro camera serves as the sole witness to what he had experienced. When asked to share the footage, he revealed that he was saving it for his upcoming memoir and documentary.

There are a handful of stories that detail the paralysing experience of being trapped in a crevasse. The fall is known to snap and dislodge bones, cause severe head trauma and internal bleeding. Some lose consciousness due to the violent impact with the hard ice, while others struggle with the inability to breathe and/or succumb to hypothermia. Survivors have shared accounts of experiencing acute dehydration and claustrophobia. Some have attempted to swing their ice axes and prick the walls, in order to probe a way back up. But the solitary experience of floundering in darkness, writhing in pain and battling cold temperatures, exhaustion and fear, makes it impossible not to feel death’s imminent presence. To haul Maloo out, a special team would be required. The local Sherpas were not equipped with the necessary rescue skills or technology to do it on their own. Even then, the most seasoned of them knew all too well what an enormous challenge it would be to scale Annapurna’s slopes to unearth a frozen, possibly lifeless body, and lug it back down.

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Across the world, however, legions of people propelled into action to orchestrate Maloo’s rescue. Well wishers reached out to ministers, defence forces, drone suppliers; and even the founder of Garmin, and Apple’s CEO, for support. Maloo’s younger brother, Aashish was leading the rescue efforts. On April 18, he arrived in Nepal with his older brother and uncle, and began a petition to rally support that would push the Indian and Nepalese governments to take quicker action. “It feels like our worst nightmares have come true,” Aashish wrote. “We know that Anurag is out there somewhere, waiting for us.”

Born in Ajmer, Rajasthan, Maloo spent his formative years in the quiet village of Naraina in Jaipur district, before moving to Kishangarh. His grandparents, with whom he stayed a fair bit during his early childhood, inculcated a spirit of resilience and vigour in him. At school, he was an academic topper, inclined towards athletics, often finding himself winning competitive races and high jumps. After graduating from school, he qualified for admission at the Indian Institute of Technology but refrained from enrolling when he didn’t secure a good rank that would enable him to choose the campus or subject that he desired.

Maloo settled with pursuing Software Engineering at Guru Gobind Singh University, New Delhi, but his heart wasn’t entirely in it. In his final college year, he spent little time in the classroom, and instead began volunteering with organisations like Indian Youth Climate Network, 350.org, North East Centre for Environmental Education and Research, and Let’s Make A Difference (Initiatives of Change). “My true learning happened outside the walls of the university,” Maloo mused, recognising in hindsight, that climate activism, education and conservation invariably became the beating heart of everything he pursued.

In school, reading about luminaries like Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, left a mark on him. But it was in college that he heard about Robert Swan—the first individual in history to walk to both the North and South Pole. Swan’s valiant expeditions stirred something within. “He truly inspired me with his positive outlook towards life,” Maloo recalled. Determined to one day meet him, he tacked a laminated photo of Swan on his wall, waking up each morning to the explorer’s pale grey eyes calling him to the majestic icescape.

In 2011, Maloo secured the Teach for India Fellowship, which enabled him to work with children in government schools, teaching sustainability and climate change to students in classes 2 and 3. It pushed him to launch ‘The Family of Global Volunteers’ in 2012 to instil human values through volunteering, shaping young leaders from underprivileged backgrounds.

Throughout, he seemed guided by an inner quest toward something far greater than he could imagine. Serendipity came knocking at his door in 2012, when he was residing in Pune. Swan was visiting the city for a leadership talk. Once the talk concluded, a wide-eyed Maloo approached his hero, who turned towards him and simply asked, “So, what’s your story, young man?”

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In Swan, Maloo found a kindred spirit—a man committed to the larger discourse surrounding climate science and sustainable interventions. In turn, Swan was impressed by Maloo's efforts to teach children about conscious sustainability. Swan urged him to join the 2013 leadership expedition to Antarctica. “Most applicants meet Swan for the first time on the expedition,” Maloo noted. “In my case, he had to push me to apply, wanting me to share my work with over 80 leaders from 30 countries.” Swan even recorded a video endorsing Maloo’s fundraising, highlighting the work he had done in India.

In 2013, Maloo spent two transformative weeks on the ice-covered continent, where, for the first time, he felt a deep sense of belonging. “When I was in Antarctica, it was clear that I wanted to climb mountains,” Maloo admitted.

Mountaineering is an expensive pursuit, and Maloo worked hard to fund his ambitions. The next seven years entailed him joining leadership roles in global venture capital and investment firms like Techstars and Seedstars, building a trusted global network while focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship.

In 2020, when people retreated into their homes due to the pandemic, Maloo began to run. Month after month he trained, his shoes kicking up dust as he pushed himself further—first one kilometre, then five, 15, and eventually 20—all within his neighbourhood. By October that same year, he had earned a coveted spot in an expedition led by the legendary Bachendri Pal called the Triple Pass Challenge, which started from Uttarakhand and culminated in Himachal Pradesh.

Throughout the expedition, Maloo carried extra weight to build strength. “I was carrying a tent, books, sleeping bag. I wouldn’t let the porter take any of it. I was testing my limits,” he said. At one point, while crossing the Borasu Pass, he was lugging at least 26 kilograms. “Until you don’t push yourself, you’ll never know your edge,” he noted.

Witnessing the impact of global warming during the expeditions, he decided to braid his passion for climate awareness with adventure. In 2021, he started the Climbing4SDGs initiative, dedicating each peak that he climbed to a UN Sustainable Development Goal. “Climate defines us,” Maloo told me. “Learning about climate resilience is what will help us survive this planet.”

Around the same time as Maloo's fall, Polish mountaineers Adam Bielecki and Mariusz Hatala were scaling Annapurna on the north-west face of the mountain, via a daring new route. The pair ultimately chose to abandon their expedition, as there was simply not enough ice to continue, and relentless rock fall made the ascend impossible. Compelled, they headed back to the base camp.

On April 19, they reached the base camp that was eerily quiet. A Sherpa from the Seven Summit Treks informed them that Maloo had been lost in the crevasse for over 48 hours and needed time-sensitive extraction. Bielecki and Hatala wasted no time. The next day, at the break of dawn, the two, voluntarily joined by a team of Sherpas, decided to embark on the complicated but extraordinary body recovery mission; a helicopter that would drop them near Camp II.

When they reached the crevasse about half an hour later, Hatala took the reins of the mission and remained at the surface, expertly managing the ropes, while Bielecki rappelled into the cavity. At the near-end of his 70-metre rope, Bielecki shone a light into the darkness and found Maloo nestled in a cocoon. His helmet and canary-yellow summit suit peeked from under the shroud-like layer of snow, as though Maloo had collapsed and compressed under the heavy blow of a fresh avalanche. Bielecki was convinced that there was no life pulsating through Maloo, until he and Tashi Sherpa slowly unearthed him and saw Maloo’s chest faintly rising and falling; his pupils reacted to light and his body shivered slightly. “He is alive!” Bielecki shouted.

Maloo was alive. The injured climber was immediately airlifted and taken to the nearest hospital in Pokhara, Nepal. The Emergency Chief at the Manipal Teaching Hospital, Dr Asim Subedi, was the first to receive the patient. Looking at Maloo at the time, Subedi admitted, “I didn’t have any hope.” At the emergency room, Maloo’s mountaineering suit, covered in shards of ice, was cut open. His core body temperature was dangerously low, and it failed to register on the hospital device. Within the first half hour of being given CPR, Maloo was pronounced dead. He had had a hypothermic cardiac arrest.

Maloo’s brother, Aashish, who had arrived at the hospital, however, persisted and pushed the doctor to continue administering CPR. “If he can survive 72 hours in the mountains,” Aashish reasoned, “how can you so easily declare that he is dead within 30 minutes?”

While Dr Subedi’s team whirred about efficiently in the emergency room in Nepal, priests and healers were chanting mantras and performing rituals for Maloo in his family home in India. Dr Subedi came straight to the point. “I told Aashish, ‘Even if your brother survives, he might not have a proper neurological recovery—he would probably end up living like a vegetable.” Aashish agreed to take on the responsibility of caring for Maloo if such a situation arose.

Dr Subedi then placed a critical question before him, “Tell me till what time I should give Anurag CPR. After that, I will stop.” He was given five hours. “There had been a telepath who had told Anurag’s family that he would come back to life within five hours,” Dr Subedi later told me.

Performing CPR for five hours is highly unusual and almost impossible under normal circumstances. However, in rare cases of severe hypothermia, which slows down the body’s metabolism significantly, prolonged resuscitation is known to protect the brain and other organs from oxygen deprivation. Even though everyone in his team had given up, they continued giving Maloo cardiac resuscitation. “Though I am a student of science, I believe in miracles,” Dr Subedi admitted. “But if it wasn’t for Aashish, I would have stopped much earlier.”

After four hours and five minutes, Maloo drew his first breath. In Dr Subedi’s entire medical career, this had been the first and only time a rescued mountaineer had been brought to his hospital, even though Mount Annapurna is in close proximity. Patients are generally rushed to the city hospital in Kathmandu. If Maloo had been admitted at another hospital, Dr Subedi wonders whether he would have received CPR that lasted more than half an hour. Maloo is quick to respond. “If I was taken elsewhere, I wouldn’t have survived,” he said.

The next few weeks were critical. Maloo’s lungs had ballooned; his kidneys and liver were damaged. His body was marked by severe frostbites and cold burns; his feet had taken on a blackened hue. “My body was in shut down mode,” Maloo recalled. Doctors wondered whether the climber had experienced permanent brain injury. About a week later, however, he gained consciousness from the coma and recognised Aashish, who recounted, “It was a feeling that can’t be explained.”

For the first five months, Maloo’s voice eluded him.

“I had a tracheostomy tube that helped me breathe and I couldn’t speak much,” he said. “All the key organs of my body were severely impacted. I had lost my entire body’s muscle memory.” Learning how to walk or sit up proved to be Herculean tasks. In June 2023, when the family celebrated his birthday with a cake, Maloo struggled to wield the lightweight wooden knife. For years, he had lived an independent, peripatetic life. Now, he had to accept that he was dependent on others. It left him vulnerable, and frustrated. His tenacious will however, remained intact. “Slowly, I learned to take the first step. Later, I would tell my physiotherapist, "I want to walk a little more, or let’s try and take the stairs today,” he recalled.

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The hardest decision of Maloo's life was consenting to the amputations. It took him ten days to come to terms with the doctors’ recommendation, while his mother focused on practical concerns: How would he work? Who would marry him?

But Maloo agreed, undergoing at least seven surgeries, including skin grafts on his forearm, chest, thighs and feet. He lost his right thumb, the tips of his right-hand fingers, and his left great toe. “What truly changed my life was accepting my reality,” he later shared. “These are my scars; they are part of my identity,” he said as he displayed his hands to me as badges of honour. “They make me who I am.”

Almost two years since the accident, Maloo has slowly started to run again, but even running for 200 metres leaves him gasping. The incident has bifurcated his life into ‘the before’ and ‘the after’. When you speak to him, he refers to the mountain as ‘Maa Annapurna’, where he describes the rescue as something akin to being reborn from the mountain’s womb, this time though, with intention.

Maloo remains deeply committed to environmental causes. He rejects the notion of PTSD, instead labelling his experience as Post Traumatic Growth. “Maybe this incident took place in my life so that I can be the voice for the mountains and protect them.” It has led him to establish ‘The Voice of Glaciers Foundation’, an initiative that amplifies the urgent need for climate action and restoring the planet's frozen lifelines.

“Life has given me a second chance, and I don’t want to waste it. Antarctica opened my eyes; Annapurna changed my life forever. I will climb again, if and when the mountains allow me.”

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