Tamara Lunger came and found us at Cisano. A few weeks have passed since she came back from her winter expedition; she is in the phase of physical recovery and on tour going from one interview to the next.

We don’t want to talk to you about Tamara ‘the great mountaineer’ because it has already been demonstrated by her accomplishments in high altitude mountaineering, or the fact that she is a happy and smiley girl because it is evident in every photograph that it taken of her and we don’t even want to recount the story of her attempt at the summit because it has already been written about many times, even though hearing her account of the story is completely different!

So we would like to try and have you feel some of the energy that is given off when she talks and the effect her words have on the people that are listening to her. Tamara speaks about the inner need to be constantly true. True as in faithful to herself, to what she wants and what she feels. Even if this can mean preferring to go the mountains rather than going on television to recount about when she was on Nanga. She admits that coming back means having to socialize again with people and sometimes this is difficult for her, because after you have been almost completely isolated for such a long time, you get used to coping with the wait, the silence, the void and it becomes difficult to cope with the crowds, the people and the voices.

How can you explain to someone that you are one of the few women in the world to have been to such a high altitude? The only way is to try it. Tamara describes the sunrise without a cloud in the sky and the colour of the sky, blue like her eyes, but it is how she recounts it, it’s as if she wants to keep a little piece for herself, a warm and enthusiastic description but being so big for her, inevitably she cannot get it all together. It is enough just to mention that in that situation at that altitude you perceive the spherical shape of the earth and to see this has to be incredible.

And from this, anecdote after anecdote, you understand that to stay close to Tamara Lunger makes you feel good, it gives you a passion for life that goes beyond the mountains. She makes you understand that to want to go to up high, to be satisfied, to make small attempts, to train and earn one metre at a time is not only something for high altitude mountaineers, it’s something that affects all of us. Whoever you are and whatever work you do, you must have the honesty to be credible and above all true to yourself, you have to have the courage to stop when you meet your limits and not worry to overdo it. And finally, you have to keep a little bit of joy for you because it’s the energy that makes you strive for something that is beyond. To stop no, but to enjoy the journey yes!

So thanks Tami, thanks for coming to see us, for bringing us some gifts from Nanga and for having told us a little bit about your experience. But above all, thanks for encouraging us to aim a little higher.

Ph: Matteo Zanardi