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Microblog Mondays: The test of endurance

For those who know me, they will surely know how much I love tales of endurance, human spirit and the will to survive in the toughest of conditions. And that is why I have been a big fan of movies like Everest, Gravity, 127 hours and books like Miracle in the Andes to name a few.

I recently watched a documentary called Touching the Void which is the story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates who scaled the Siula Grande in the Andes in 1985. While they scaled the 6,300m peak in about 3 days, the journey back was almost nearly fatal. As soon as the decent began, Joe broke his leg and Simon had to make sure that both he and his friend came down together since they had tied the rope to each other when they had started and one’s death meant almost a fatal plunge for the other.

As things got from bad to worse, Simon was forced to cut the rope between him and Joe leading to Joe’s 150m fall. The rest of the story deals with the way Joe survives and is an ode to his resilience to live. Mind you, all this while Simon had thought that he had seen the last of his friend.

Ironically, at many points of this story, I was reminded of 127 hours and what Aaron Rolston had to go through.  Interestingly after watching this, I ended up watching The Beckoning Silence which is the story of Toni Kurz, a German mountain climber’s attempt in 1936 at ascending the Eiger peak’s North Face. In 1936, there still hadn’t been a successful attempt at Eiger’s North Face and instead all there had been were a number of deaths.

You need to watch this one to know the similarities with Joe Simpson’s story 46 years later.

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13 Comments

  1. Watched them all. Thanks for sharing !!

  2. Sounds Interesting. Let me watch this documentary over the weekend! Thank you for sharing this.

  3. inspiring 🙂 !! Have to watch the video

  4. Nice write-up. I’m going to watch this over the weekend.

  5. Sounds interesting keep up the good work 🙂

  6. 127 was a great movie, scary though to think of. I have to take time out and watch this one

  7. seems nice aseem, will try to watch this when time permits..Menaka Bharathi has recently published /saving-investing-know-exactly

  8. Your description itself is giving me chills. I am always amazed by these stories. The kind of strength and endurance they have seems incredible. I will definitely watch it.

  9. I think I should watch these 2 movies, I have watched a few on tornadoes recently. Try twister movie!

  10. I love documentaries and both these look inspiring and interesting 🙂

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