My Story
Origins
Born in Wimbledon around 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 at seven years old, chronic asthma that left me gasping for air most nights.
Doctors told me not to exhaust myself. One day, a different doctor prescribed sports. Desperate, I began running at 6am every morning. Within a few weeks, I had stopped using the inhalers. Months later, I won the school’s 800m race after finishing 7th the year before.
That lesson defined my life: we can change the card’s we’re dealt in life through hard work and perseverance.
Summit One
At 15, a summer camp and mountain climb in Switzerland changed everything.
It was the first time I saw snow. On the summit, I found a small logbook. I looked through the pages to realize I was the first Egyptian. My entry: Omar Sherif Samra. Egyptian. The book was neat until I took up a whole page drawing the pyramids.
It wasn’t just pride that I felt, it was belonging.
On the way down, an idea began to form. How amazing would it be to climb the highest mountain on earth!
The Corporate Chapter
After graduating with a BA in Economics, I began working at an investment bank in London. On paper, life looked perfect: career, friends, security. But a quiet unease kept whispering. When my friend Dennis told me about his cycling across Europe, something clicked!
Months later, I was alone on a bicycle in southern Spain, pedaling across Andalusia under the blazing sun. Somewhere between exhaustion and euphoria, I understood what aliveness really felt like!
Backpacking for 370 Days
When I got back to work I could no longer relate. So, I began planning my exit.
At 24, I quit my job and set off on a solo journey across Asia and Latin America. Fourteen countries, endless adventure, and countless stories.
I learned to appreciate the simple things in life, that freedom was wealth, discomfort was my teacher, and that meaning was the only fortune worth finding.
By the end , I was broke. So, I returned to the bank and used every chance I had on climbing bigger and harder routes in the Andes and Alps.
Eventually, I quit then applied and got accepted at London Business School for an MBA.
Mount Everest
The plan was to focus on retooling to switch career after university. I made myself a promise: No climbing! Fate had a different plan.
Days into the program, a fellow student - Ben Stephens - announced he wanted to climb Everest and was looking for a team.
I immediately joined. Victoria James and Greg Maud did too. For two years, we trained and prepared relentlessly.
At 28, after a greulling 60-day climb, I reached the summit of Mount Everest, becoming the first Egyptian and youngest Arab to do so.
I had accomplished my childhood dream. On the way down I began to feel this void. What now?
I returned to a hero’s welcome in Egypt which I wasn’t expecting! Two months and tens of media interviews and talks later, I decided to turn down the job I’d worked so hard to get in London, and stayed in Egypt, working in Private Equity to pay the bills.
Two years later, in 2009, I realized I had to marry my work and passion. I founded Wild Guanabana, the Middle East’s first hiking and climbing tour company to help connect people with nature and themselves.
The company has since guided thousands of people on life changing journeys.
Wild Guanabana - Life Changing Journeys
The Seven Summits
With Everest (2007) under my belt, I set my eyesight on climbing the highest mountain on every continent. I climbed Kilimanjaro (2008), Elbrus (2009), Carstenz Pyramid (2009), Aconcagua (2011), Vinson (2012), and Denali (2013) on the 2nd attempt.
I became the first Egyptian to complete the Seven Summits.
I returned from Alaska to Miami to unite with my beloved Marwa and welcome our new baby girl into the world.
Loss and Becoming
For months I couldn’t talk about what had happened. One day, I met Brandon from Humans of New York. He shared my story over a series of five emotional posts. When I saw it had gone viral I panicked.
Then through thousands of messages and comments, I experienced an incredible outpour of love and empathy that showed me how grief, loss and vulnerability connects us all.
The experience made me realize that I need to stand on stage one day to tell my own story.
Our daughter, Teela, was born on June 17, 2013. She’s named after a heroine from the cartoons I grew up watching, a warrior and a sorcerer. We chose the name hoping she would grow up fierce, and carry a quiet kind of magic within her.
Five days later, Marwa faced unexpected complications and was rushed to the ICU. She passed away soon after in my arms.
The days, weeks and months that followed were full of darkness. Sometimes I would scream to drown the voices in my head.
The TEDxBend
Turning Point
Finally, in 2016, I was brave enough to step onto the stage in front of 1400 people to share my story. It was one of the hardest and scariest things I had ever done.
This wasn’t a talk about mountains or endurance. It was an opportunity to honor Marwa, our story together, and mine. I learned what it meant to be strong and vulnerable that day.
The experience shifted something in me. When I walked off that stage, I felt more proud than I had ever done in my life. More than climbing any mountain.
Rowing the Atlantic Ocean
In 2017, I set out with my friend Omar Nour to row 5500km across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Carribean.
After a slow start, sickness, and exhaustion, day 9 dawns in a gale storm, 1000km from shore. A rogue wave capsizes the boat and throws us into the freezing cold waters. With beacons failing, we begin our battle to survive through 45-knot winds, and 8-meter waves.
We spent 13 hours facing dehydration, hallucination, and the possibility of never seeing our families again. What followed was a dramatic rescue that tested our every resolve.
The journey became the award-winning documentary Beyond the Raging Sea, which tells our story but also sheds light on the plight of refugees crossing dangerous seas in search for safety and a better life.
The Final Frontier
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.
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.”
