My Story
Origins
Born in Wimbledon during the tennis championships, my parents were convinced I’d grow up to be the Egyptian Boris Becker.
I didn’t.
I had a terrible backhand — and by eleven, chronic asthma that left me gasping for air.
A doctor once told my parents that sports might help. Out of sheer defiance, I started running through Cairo’s dusty streets. Within two months, the asthma was gone. What remained was the lesson that would define my life: the body can change — and so can we — if we’re willing to struggle for it.
The First Summit
At sixteen, a summer camp in Switzerland changed everything.
It was the first time I saw snow, the first time I climbed a mountain. At the top, under a cold blue sky, I found a small logbook, wrote my name, drew the Egyptian flag, and realized I was the only one from my country to stand there.
It wasn’t pride I felt — it was belonging. The vastness of the world suddenly made sense.
The Corporate Chapter
After studying Economics, I joined an investment bank in London. On paper, life looked perfect: career, friends, security. But a quiet unease kept whispering. When a friend told me about cycling across Europe, something clicked.
Months later, I was alone on a bicycle in southern Spain, pedaling through Andalusia under the blazing sun. Somewhere between exhaustion and euphoria, I understood what aliveness really felt like.
370 Days That Changed Everything
That short ride became a leap into the unknown.
In 2002, I left my job and set off on a 370-day backpacking journey across Asia and Latin America — fourteen countries, endless mountains, and countless stories.
I learned that simplicity was wealth, discomfort was a teacher, and that meaning often hides in movement.
When I returned, I couldn’t fit back into the life I’d left behind.
Everest
Over the next few years, I trained relentlessly.
In 2007, after two years of preparation and a 65-day climb, I reached the summit of Mount Everest, becoming the first Egyptian — and youngest Arab — to do so.
It felt like an ending, but it was only the beginning of a new question: What now?
That question became Wild Guanabana — the Middle East’s first adventure-travel company, founded in 2009 at the height of the global financial crisis.
Built on the belief that adventure can transform lives, it has since guided thousands of people to rediscover themselves through nature.
For me, it was never about records — it was about helping others find what I had once sought alone: a way back to themselves.
Wild Guanabana
To the Ends of the Earth
I went on to complete the Seven Summits and the Explorers Grand Slam — climbing the highest mountain on every continent and skiing to both Poles.
Fewer than fifty people in history have done it.
Each journey pushed my limits and revealed how small those limits really were.
The higher I climbed, the clearer it became that what I was seeking couldn’t be found on any summit.
Lost & Rebirth
Loss and Rebirth
A post about our story on Humans of New York reached millions, opening a wave of empathy that reminded me how grief connects us all.
But healing is rarely public. It’s quiet, slow, and often invisible.
In 2013, I became a father to my daughter Teela. Hours later, I lost my wife, Marwa, during childbirth.
The years that followed were my hardest climb yet — through grief, rebuilding, and redefining what strength means.
I kept moving because stillness hurt.
I climbed, I spoke, I built, I tried to give Teela the love and world her mother had dreamed for her.
The TEDx
Turning Point
In 2016, I stepped onto a stage in Bend, Oregon, to give a talk about fear, love, and the illusion of control.
It was the first time I spoke not about mountains or endurance, but about vulnerability — the kind you can’t train for.
That talk shifted something in me. Adventure was no longer just about what I could do with my body — it was about what I could understand through it.
Beyond the Raging Sea (2017)
A year later, I set out with my friend Omar Nour to row 5,000 kilometers across the Atlantic Ocean in the world’s toughest race.
Two weeks in, a violent storm capsized our boat.
We spent 13 hours adrift in freezing waters, facing dehydration, hallucination, and the possibility of never seeing our families again.
When we were finally rescued, the world saw a story of survival.
What I saw was surrender — and a raw, humbling reminder of how fragile we are.
That journey became the award-winning documentary Beyond the Raging Sea, a film not about adventure, but about the shared human instinct to endure — a story that still feels as much spiritual as it was physical.
New Frontiers (2018)
In 2018, I trained as an analogue astronaut, serving as Vice-Commander of the Lunares III Moon Mission.
It was a surreal extension of a childhood dream — to reach space — but what I discovered wasn’t cosmic awe as much as perspective.
Living for days inside a simulated lunar base, cut off from the world, I realized how small our differences look from above — and how vital it is to protect the fragile planet that holds us all.
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.
The Lost Years
(2020 – 2023)
Then came stillness — the hardest kind.
The world shut down with COVID-19, and within a month, I lost both my sisters.
After decades of chasing summits, oceans, and skies, I suddenly found myself still — and for the first time, lost without movement.
The grief of those years was unlike any before. It stripped everything that wasn’t essential.
I questioned who I was without adventure, without forward momentum.
I faced the quiet disorientation that comes when identity and purpose dissolve.
Slowly, something new began to form — a deeper acceptance that life isn’t meant to be mastered, only met.
That not knowing what comes next can sometimes be its own kind of wisdom.
Into the Dark (2024)
In the summer of 2024, I entered a darkness retreat — several days in complete isolation and absence of light.
It was not an escape, but a return: a descent into silence where there were no peaks to conquer, no distances to cross.
Only breath, memory, and awareness.
In that dark stillness, I met everything I had once tried to outrun — the unfinished conversations, the buried grief, the endless motion.
What emerged wasn’t revelation, but peace.
A knowing that all the landscapes I had ever explored existed within me all along.
“In the dark, I saw more clearly than ever before.”
A New Kind
of Exploration
Today, my work reflects that transformation.
Through Wild Guanabana, I continue to lead people into wild places to reconnect with nature and with themselves.
Through Ala Keifak — a hospitality and conservation company I co-founded with Khaled — I channel that same spirit into spaces that heal both land and soul.
Our flagship project, Aseela, an eco-lodge and marine conservation hub in Soma Bay, brings it all together: sustainability, beauty, and belonging.
The purpose is clear again — to use everything I’ve learned from adventure, loss, and stillness to help others rediscover what it means to be human.
Now
After decades of chasing summits, I spend more time by the sea — writing, speaking, raising my daughter, and creating experiences that remind others that adventure isn’t an escape, but a return.
“After all these years, I’ve learned that the greatest journey isn’t outward — it’s the one that takes you home to yourself.”
Speaking
More Aspects
