How I Trained for Everest in the Saudi Desert with Nelly Attar

0:00I wanted to lead by example. I wanted people to see that if I could do it, they could do it too. And I wanted to kind of carve out that pathway for them. You know, I went from dancing to then doing endurance sports. And then that's when, like, I started delving more and more in the world of hiking and outdoor sports. And until eventually I climbed the highest mountain in the world.

0:25Nellia Tar has climbed more than 30 notable peaks around the world, including Mount Everest. But her journey to these intense mountaineering expeditions had an unconventional origin, dance. Nelly grew up dancing along to YouTube videos, and eventually she opened the first dance studio in Saudi Arabia, which at the time was pretty revolutionary. Along the way, Nelly fell in love with all different types of movement, from group fitness classes to weightlifting and hiking. These disciplines laid the groundwork for Nelly's mountaineering career. She's broken multiple records for her ascents, and in 2022, Nelly became the first Arab to summit K2, which is known as the world's most dangerous mountain.

1:09I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard. Nelly Attar, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You have truly lived a wild life, so I'm really excited to talk to you today. Where are you right now? I am tuning in from Dubai, Dubai United Arab Emirates. I think you're a first guest that's tuning in from Dubai. Amazing. Tell us a little bit about where you grew up. So I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And I grew up in what was once considered the least active country in the world.

1:53You know, I was always brought up in a desert environment. We had sports and school on and off. Back then, Saudi was quite conservative, especially when it came to women and girls doing outdoor activities. Just to give you some context, I mean, everything was segregated. Schools were segregated. Restaurants were segregated. in terms of like entertainment activities. We didn't have cinemas. The malls were also segregated. And so sports wasn't really part of our daily living. It was, you know, something that would happen every now and then. But I just remember from when I was a kid, I loved going on desert walks with my dad.

2:33So we basically used to drive out for like an hour and a half and it would be a few families coming together. And we used to run something called an istiraha, which is basically like a little desert camp out. And then we'd just go for like very recreational walks for like an hour because it's quite warm. And I just loved nature.

2:58Those desert walks with her family left a big impression on Nellie. Her father had a free spirit just like she did and always encouraged her to get outside and move. When she was 17, Nelly's dad invited her to climb Mount Kenya, a 5 ,000-meter peak in Africa. While the trek to the top was a lot harder than they expected, she enjoyed how much it pushed her out of her comfort zone. Not long after that trip, Nelly left Saudi Arabia for university. For the first time in her life, she had access to all kinds of sports and dance classes. so while you were in college or university is that where you first discovered movement in a big way when I moved to university I'm like yay this is like Disneyland for me because I have all these options dance classes I got into break dancing and then that kind of took a turn when I went to do my master's I moved to the UK and I've always dealt with anxiety I've always had anxiety since I was a kid.

4:00And I actually had been to the psychologist several times when I was a kid and given anti-anxiety pills. But it was only when I was in the UK that I started training. I'd go to the gym and I started training. And I started training because I wanted to maintain a good shape. But then I realized, actually, I got so much more out of training, which is helping my mental health. It really, really helped calm me down. It helped me see my potential. And that was the start of my, I guess, training dream.

4:36Nelly loved movement in all its forms. At the gym, she jumped into group fitness classes, experimented with weights and running, and rediscovered her love for dance. That passion eventually led her to become a certified dance fitness instructor. After finishing school, Nelly worked as a psychologist in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, and she started to teach dance classes to her colleagues after work. At this time, dance studios and women's gyms weren't officially licensed in Saudi, but luckily Nelly was able to teach within the hospital. These classes were like Zumba meets Afrobeats and hip-hop. Nelly loved teaching and realized that she wanted to work as an instructor and coach full-time.

5:18While she was between jobs, Nelly decided to turn to nature and climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It was a chance to test her training, challenge herself, and see what her body and mind were capable of. That climb would mark the start of her mountaineering journey.

5:36Will you tell me first how you got to Kilimanjaro? How did I get to Kilimanjaro? So it was always in my mind that I wanted to do some big hike again. And you know, what better than Kilimanjaro? And I loved it. I loved it because it kind of put all my training to test. at that, like by then I was already properly training. I was actually a CrossFit instructor as well, not just dance instructor, CrossFit instructor, personal trainer, spinning instructor. And so it was really nice to see how my body performed on a high mountain, high altitude and in environments and conditions that were completely different to what I'm used to.

6:11So it just, I felt like all mountains were going to be that way. Obviously I didn't know what was to come. But I'm like, okay, I want to do more of this. Did you have a guide? Did you have a group of friends that you did this with? Like, how did you get there? I hiked or climbed Kilimanjaro with about three people, friends from Saudi. And there was a bunch of guides, of course, and porters. And so yeah, we climbed Kilimanjaro through like a commercial company. And it was a beautiful experience. I really enjoyed it. And I mean, the only night that I felt challenged was summit night because of the cold, but I don't remember having any issues with the altitude.

6:52It was more just like such a long day. That's amazing. But you're well trained for it with all the other things you did. When does the second mountain that you decide to embark on come into picture? How many years later? The second mountain was literally a year later, which is Mount Alvarez, the highest peak in Europe and I remember when deciding on Albris there was the option to do the south route which is a more commercial route and you are able to take cable cars up to a certain extent there's more campsites along the way or you can take the north route where I think it's just two campsites and you basically have a much bigger summit day it's almost 2 ,000 meters I'm like oh it looks it seems more challenging so I'm going to do that and of course you did of course I did I don't think I was prepared, but that taught me that I have a lot of mental strength because although physically I was not ready for it, giving up was not an option.

7:47I just kept going and going and going and going. And yeah, I came back. And after I forgot the pain and the misery of that night, I'm like, I want to do more of this. And I don't think I was in great shape for Albris. I say this now because when I started to train smarter, it made a huge difference for how I felt on the mountain. And like I would suffer a lot more back then, but I just I always knew that I was not going to give up. I always felt like I still have a lot within me. You just have to dig deeper. You just have to dig deeper.

8:19With each mountain, Nelly discovered her potential was greater than she realized. Back at home, the social and political climate in Saudi Arabia began to create new opportunities for women. And Nelly opened the country's first dance studio. She taught other women the joy and power of movement while continuing to push her own limits in the mountains. Within a few years of her trek up Kilimanjaro, she climbed several 6 ,000 and 7 ,000 meter peaks. Soon enough, Nelly came up with a wild idea to attempt Mount Everest.

8:55How did you get to Everest? A friend that I started to climb with more and more consistently, a friend named Shadif, and I were having dinner and he's like Nellie I think I know what our next adventure should be and I was like what and then he says Everest and I was like are you out of your mind what do you mean Everest we're not ready how are we ever going to get there it's not something I'm interested in doing I come back home that night and I couldn't sleep and I was like you know what this is why because I need to go do this can't sleep because I have all these questions about how terrifying that idea is.

9:31So I wake up in the morning and I get my mom's blessing. Like, mom, I think I'm going to do Everest next year. Do you think it's a good idea? Got her a blessing before this whole idea turned into a dream and then turned into reality. So what did your training look like? My training was very creative. I had to work with the environment I was in. Stairmaster, running on a treadmill. How long are you on the Stairmaster and treadmill for? at least an hour and a half, sometimes up to three hours. What would you do during that time? Would you listen to podcasts? Would you listen to books? Would you listen to music?

10:06I would watch movies of people climbing Everest. And so like I was visualizing, I was feeling, I would cry sometimes. I really needed to feel it because it really felt like a different world to me. I was sitting here training indoors, you know, in gyms that were relatively empty. And here I am like dying on a stairmaster machine or treadmill. So I really had to create that zone that would help me keep going. Sometimes I'd have my friends. and this till today is one of my approaches like when I have these long sessions it's always nicer to have friends that come and join and the friend could come for an hour and then have another two hours it's better than just doing it three hours on my own and so yeah I'd spend three hours on a stairmaster sometimes running on a treadmill and then sometimes we drive far out into the desert where I can do a bit of hiking there was like a trail called camel trail a tiny hill but that was the most elevation I could get.

10:55So I would repeat that like five, six times with a heavy pack. And yeah, strength sessions, mainly targeting my legs and my glutes. And so my week would be anywhere from like 12 to about 20 hours of training. A lot of it was indoors, but the trail running and the hiking was outdoors. Everest is expensive. How do you fund this? Sponsorship. I thought I was going to get, I thought sponsorship was going to be easier because at the time, yeah, because no, I laugh. I laugh because this is what everybody thinks. We all think it's going to be so easy to get sponsored. Absolutely. And at the time I thought because not many people in the region do this and because it's such a grand idea and no one living in Saudi at the time was actually doing this as a woman.

11:41So I thought, yeah, it's going to be easy. And I had to pay a deposit and I'm like, okay, I'm paying a deposit. I'll get that back. I ended up getting small sponsorship fee relative to the amount that I paid. I think it was a quarter of the overall fee. I was lucky to have found that brand. But yeah, I was like, I remember maybe two, three weeks before doing Everest, I broke down. I broke down to my life coach. I had a life coach that I was working with. And I was just like, why am I doing this? Why? Why am I here? Like, I have to spend so much money on a climb, one climb. And I don't even know if I'm going to make it to this climb?

12:19Is it even worth it? Who am I proving something to? What do I have to prove for people? Why am I doing this? So I had an existential crisis. I still remember that day. I was sitting and crying at move and I locked myself in a room so no one can see me. And I didn't want my parents to know this because my parents were questioning why I was going for the same reason. They're like, now you're putting so much money into this. And like the risks are high and the closer I got to Everest, my family started to get really worried. They said yes initially because I think it was still so far-fetched. It was a year away.

12:51But the closer I got, I feel like everyone started to get worried. And then I didn't lock in the money. And I had to pay the rest on my own. So what was it like to climb Everest? How was the experience? It was an incredible journey. It really was a life-changing journey. Not because of the summit, not because it's Everest, But because I got to have this big purpose that year, I had to work through so many challenges, you know, living in Saudi at the time. And it became like a community mission because so many people came on board to help me train. So it also helped other women get active. I really felt like I was taking all these women with me from Saudi to the top of the world.

13:36And then that was the first time that I really tested my potential. I truly tested myself in environments that were very foreign to me and I felt like I grew up in Saudi in a bubble it was very sheltered it was very safe especially for a woman because we couldn't drive we didn't really have autonomy in our daily lives and so doing that for me meant so much more than just the climb. Do you have a day on Everest that you remember that you'll never forget, like whether it's a visual thing or a really scary moment or just something that really struck out about that trip? I kind of danced my way through Everest.

14:12And I used to, like when I was on Everest, I was so afraid. I was so worried. But my approach to it was make every day count, have a good time. So I would always go around, connect with people. I was everywhere. I was dancing. I was paying cards. I was journaling, watch movies. Like I didn't just want to think of that one objective and fixate on that as we're building towards that objective make everyday count um and that's why it was such a meaningful journey so are you having dance-offs with like the other climbers and the sherpas are you just filming yourself dancing to like do it back home no no i was having someone film me dance so that i would share it with people back home and we share it on the page but then also i was dancing with sherpas like anytime there was an opportunity for like a group dance.

14:58Of course, I was the one that stirs everything. And, you know, I was dancing everywhere, actually. Sometimes I made a fool out of myself, but I was dancing everywhere. I love it. I love it. I love it. What did it look like at the top? Of Everest? I don't remember. I actually don't remember. The summit day was so overwhelming for me. It was one of the busiest days on Everest. I think it was the second or the third deadliest season on Everest. 16 people had died. It was, you know, that year where the picture came out of the big queue. We climbed the second day, but we still had a massive queue. And it was mainly because the weather window narrowed in and all climbers had to go up on the same two days.

15:41And just going up the second day, we saw so many people that had died the day before. And I was absolutely petrified, absolutely petrified. And I was just thinking all these people are here for the same reason. No one thought they're gonna die and I just I really felt like I wanted to turn around because it's a very hostile environment I don't know what's going to happen yeah it was all fun and games up until this point but is it still fun and games like what do I do I really was puzzled and if anything that gave me more drive to just move faster and get the the day over with or the night over with when we got to the summit um we we had a really big group and obviously we're not waiting for each other, but I was just waiting for some of the girls to arrive because we're a group of four Arab women.

16:26But when I got to the top, I actually don't remember what the top looks like. I don't. I just remember thinking, I'm terrified. I'm happy I made it. I'm relieved. But this is just halfway. We have to go back down.

16:41Many mountaineers say that descending a mountain can be just as challenging as climbing it. Nellie and her group made it down safely, but the intensity of the experience was overwhelming. Everest tested Nellie's courage, focus, and resilience, and it left her wondering how she could challenge herself further.

17:09Nellie Attar is a world-class, record-setting mountaineer. Her first ascent took place on Mount Kenya with her father, where she fell in love with pushing her limits. Nelly went on to summit Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, and Aconcagua. In 2019, she summited Mount Everest and earned recognition across the Middle East. But just as her career was taking off, Nelly experienced a loss that changed everything.

17:39after Everest, Everest 2019, I was literally on top of the world and my dad was so proud, my dad was so, so proud, his little girl that he used to take to the desert for desert walks has, you know, climbed the highest mountain in the world, that was 2019, in 2020, I lost my dad to COVID and my entire world changed. COVID affected my business. COVID affected all of our lives. And I thought that was the hardest thing that I would have to endure that year with all these changes. And then I lose my dad and it shifted my world entirely. And I just needed to be with myself and come back to myself and, and, and just take care of myself.

18:25And I decided to close my dance studio, which was a very, very hard decision. I didn't want to ride out COVID. I actually just felt like my heart wasn't there anymore. I wanted to leave. I wanted to leave Saudi as well and see what other opportunities lie out there. And I was like, you know what? Life has changed. If I'm not going to jump on this opportunity now, then I don't know when. So I just decided to close the dance studio. That's when I started to come to the UAE a lot, just to explore what I can do with sports here. And then that's when we attempted Denali. Denali was the only goal that had made me feel happy.

19:07Nothing made me feel happy. I lost so much weight. I lost about 10 kilograms because I couldn't eat. I just kept training and I kept training for nothing really. And then I remember when my friend suggested, let's do Denali. That was the first time I had a smile on my face. And then I went and cried because I'm like, I can't believe I smiled. I feel guilty for smiling so soon. But then that gave me purpose and I started to train and like it was cathartic. It was really like a release for me. And although we didn't summit Denali, I dreamt of my dad every single day on Denali. And it was very soulful for me.

19:47I didn't care about the summit. And I cared that it helped me get out of this really dark hole while also still making me feel so connected to my dad. And it was after Denali that I thought of K2. And it was the year mark of my dad passing away, November 2, 2021. I was sitting in Egypt for a project. I was there, a work project. And I was just sitting in the coffee shop. And I'm like, I'm going to do K2. I want to do something big, something that scares me, something of a completely different scale, something that will have me training in a way that I've never trained, because training is cathartic for me.

20:27And I want to climb through life again, because I felt like that was the darkest year of my life. And I want to do something that honors my dad. And so K2 came into mind. And that's where the journey of K2 started. And maybe you just describe a little bit, the difference between K2 and Everest for people who don't know? So Everest, highest peak in the world, sits at 8 ,848 meters. K2 is 8 ,611 meters above sea level. So there's like a 200 meter difference. But K2 is a lot more dangerous because of the terrain, because of when it's a lot more exposed, it's a lot less commercialized. There's a lot more hazards with weather and a lot more environmental hazards like rock fall, avalanches.

21:15And with all these factors combined, it just makes K2 a lot more dangerous. And then it's also a lot more difficult to climb because it's mixed climbing. It's ice, rock, snow, constant change between these three elements. Everest is like a snow slope that you're moving up. K2 is a lot more demanding, a lot more demanding. And the angle at which K2 sits, it's a lot steeper. And because it's less commercial, if anything goes wrong, if anything happens, you're not going to have rescue, maybe for a few days. That's amazing. Tell me a little bit more about your training. Like, what did it look like every day?

21:50I worked with a brilliant coach. He was in the special forces, so his training was really, really different. And I wanted someone that really would help me push my limits in a way that I had never done before. And my training was about 30 hours a week sometimes. like, yeah, my training was insane. And I was training in sand dunes. I was training in 45 degrees. Like so many times I was so close to fainting, but I'd always think, suffer now, summit later, suffer now, summit later. And that experience, the experience to K2 was also so much more than just the climb. It was, the climb was like maybe the smaller aspect of it.

22:30It was so much more than the climb. It was a healing journey for me through my grief. It was also, this is what actually put my brand out there because no one understood what K2 was. And I didn't care if they didn't understand. I'm like, okay, I'm still going to do it anyways. And the people that knew what K2 was were like, oh girl, you're not going to do it. You don't have the experience. What are you thinking? My friends tried to convince me out of it. I just knew what I needed to do. And that was it. And I had one focus. and how did you fund this trip how did i fund this trip so k2 again um this time around i had a media kit so i was a lot more professional with my approach i had a few assets that i blasted to different companies but then i also created a sponsorship package that i would customize for different companies and i was just relentless i applied to so many companies got so many rejections, maybe even maybe over 200 companies.

23:29And I just felt like I'll find the right one. I love that you're telling me this because people don't realize that to do a wild idea, it's expensive and you have to pitch yourself and you're going to get a lot of no's. And you can't take it personal. So this was the shift that I had. Like, I can't take this personal. I just have to be relentless. Applied to so many companies. And it was in my luck, it was in my favor that these companies turned me down because eventually the right companies came on board and it was so close in time. So I had to pay my deposit. And here we go again. I don't have a sponsor.

24:03And my mom was just going out of her mind. She's like, Nelly, you close your down studio. You don't have a steady source of income. You're in between countries. You know, you don't really have stability. Do you really want to invest your savings on this climb? Like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I remember this was so like a month before k2 it was ramadan it was the month that we fast so i already had other challenges of fasting all day and then having to train at midnight and night and i still had to put in those hours because this was the peak training for me i couldn't come back on the hours and here i was training at like two in the morning because i was fasting in the day so like we fast from sunrise to sunset and um so i already had that and then i had the issue of like not finding sponsors.

24:47And like in a month, I had K2. But I kept saying, trust the process, trust the process. After months of relentless training and countless setbacks, Nelly finally secured the funding and she set out for Pakistan in June of 2022. The trek into K2's base camp was challenging, and she had to wait there for a week for a weather window to open up. Then on July 22nd, Nelly became the first Arab to summit K2.

25:17tell me a little bit about k2 what was it like k2 um it was a lot more so the hike to k2 base camp alone is a lot more rugged and challenging than hiking up to everest base camp it's longer in distance the terrain is a lot more rugged unforgiving um and then all of us almost all of us got sick. The water was contaminated or the food was contaminated. So it just felt more hostile and harder than getting to Everest base camp. I remember when I got to K2 base camp, I passed out because I felt really sick. I just had a stomach bug. So as soon as I got there, I had to take antibiotics. And then, yeah, being on K2, we don't spend as much time as we do on Everest because the risks are so much higher.