Egyptian explorer Omar Samra on how mountaineering helped him rediscover himself

In 2017, Egyptian mountain and polar explorer Omar Samra found himself staring straight into the eyes of death. Samra and his partner, the Egyptian adventurer Omar Nour, were in the middle of rowing across the Atlantic Ocean while undertaking The Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, often described as ‘the world’s toughest row’. The duo, who had no prior experience in the field, aimed to cover 3,000 nautical miles from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean in under 40 days.

But a few days in, a storm erupted and their boat was almost swallowed by the ocean’s notoriously moody waters. “Our boat had capsized and the life raft didn’t open,” he recalls. “And we were basically floating in huge waves … It took 13 hours for us to be saved.” They were finally pulled to safety by a cargo vessel. The whole experience, captured in the documentary Beyond the Raging Sea (UNHCR was one of the partners of their row and the documentary), was intended to highlight the plight of desperate refugees who cross such dangerous waters in search of better lives.

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Samra is no stranger to such challenges — both physical and mental. ​​He ​is the first Egyptian to scale Mount Everest​ and complete the Explorer’s Grand Slam, after overcoming many hurdles. And in 2013, tragedy struck when his wife passed away. His two sisters passed away during Covid as well. Yet every time, he has managed to pull himself up and move ahead with resolve.

Discovering the mountains

Samra was born into an Egyptian family in the United Kingdom, where his parents were living temporarily while his sisters attended a school for children with special needs. The family returned to Egypt shortly after his birth.

Growing up with two siblings who required round-the-clock care, while also struggling with childhood asthma, he had a fairly challenging childhood. “From a very young age, I had the responsibility of taking care of my sisters,” says Samra, who is also a UN Goodwill Ambassador. “I had a different upbringing — my friends would be out doing stuff, and I would need to stay back to help take care of my sisters.”

But these experiences instilled a strong sense of duty and justice in him very early on. “My sisters taught me more than anybody else — they taught me a lot about tolerance, which I try to bring into my work. I think about inclusion, which comes into play in the different things I do, and it’s a big part of who I am.”

He discovered his love for climbing by chance. His parents had sent him to a summer camp in Switzerland and one weekend, he was given the choice to either go cycling in the countryside or city, visit a museum, or hike in the snow-capped mountains. He naturally gravitated towards the mountains, as he had never seen snow before. Samra still remembers the beauty of the mountains, the sense of peace and calm that enveloped him, and also the sense of challenge that accompanied it. “I remember there was a little notebook there on the summit where I had written my name and where I was from.”

As he made his way down the mountain, he felt like a new life path had opened up — until then, like most teenagers, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do in life. “I thought, how amazing would it be to climb the highest mountain in the world. That idea had already started forming in my mind,” he says. But his parents advised him to forget about his newfound love for climbing and instead settle for a ‘sensible’ profession. “In those days, there was an expectation to provide in a certain way,” he explains. “You become indoctrinated into thinking that there is only one way to achieve that, which is to lead a very traditional life that’s been pre-scripted somehow.”

Years later, he left for the UK to pursue a career in investment banking, and his job gave him the financial freedom to finally pursue his dreams. “I started climbing progressively harder peaks like Alpamayo and Artesonraju in Peru,” he says.

His victorious ascent of Mount Everest was anything but easy — he faced several challenges both on the mountain and the ground. “During our ascent, a man from another team had died and we were the first ones on the scene,” he remembers. “And I didn’t get a huge amount of support from Egypt while trying to get sponsorship — it came from the private sector. The government was very sceptical...”

Almost overnight, Samra became a public figure. As an introvert, he is more comfortable conquering some of the tallest mountains in the world than being thrust under the harsh spotlight. “But I realised that there was something special about my interactions with people,” he continues. “When I would go and speak somewhere, people would email me or tell me that something in my story inspired them to do something in their own life.”

Overcoming grief

When his wife passed away, Samra dealt with it the best way he knew how — by pushing himself physically.

In 2016, he completed the Explorer’s Grand Slam and became only the 30th person in the world to do so. The trip had twin objectives: to finish a long-awaited adventure, and to also process his wife’s death.

Shortly after that, Samra and an Alaskan mountaineer became the first to climb three mountains in Antarctica, and the latter graciously gave him the honour of naming them, as is customary for first ascents. Samra says he named them after his family— his daughter and his late wife — and they remain frozen in time as a family, in that largely untouched corner of the world.

Mountaineering has always been an activity of solitude and reflection where you are alone, scaling astonishing heights. Sometimes, climbers find it hard to deal with the deafening silence, but Samra always welcomed it, describing it as “soothing”. “But it (climbing mountains and setting off on adventures) was also my crutch,” he says, explaining that although he enjoyed and loved doing it, he was also escaping from certain things — something which he wasn’t aware of when he was younger.

He had become numb, he says, and felt like he had to travel to the  ends of the world or push himself to superhuman limits to feel something. “Sometimes, the hardest thing to do in the world is to just sit where you are and process your emotions, rather than do something that seems very hard visually when, actually, you’re running away from a problem,” he explains.

Ready for chapter two

After his attempted row across the Atlantic Ocean, Samra says he lost the urge and motivation to push hard. “It happened gradually, and came with a feeling of loss.” Although he was unable to complete the journey, it set the foundation for the next chapter of his life, he says. He overhauled his life, decided to live away from the city, refocus his work around what he loves, lead a slower life, and write more. “And I understand now that the mountains and those pursuits gave me certain things, which I need to seek within myself and not go out to get,” he says.

Since 2009, he has been running his adventure travel company, Wild Guanabana. “We also work with governments to develop hiking and biking trails around different parts of the world, especially in Saudi Arabia and so on,” adds Samra, who also sits on the board of Equality Now, which works towards global gender equality. He is also working on a memoir, which he hopes his daughter will read one day to understand his life — its many highs and sorrows — and how he became the man he is. There are other exciting projects too: building an eco lodge and conservation centre by the Red Sea, and working with an NGO involved in mangrove conservation.

“I can still engage in climbing, but now my relationship with it is different,” he continues. “It’s now only focused on joy, connecting with nature and finding happiness in that way.”