In 2017, I teamed up with British-Sri Lankan writer, Tanya Warnakulasuriya, to meet a bunch of thinkers, writers, rebels, and entrepreneurs from Sri Lanka to talk about their lives, and in the process reveal that extraordinary people can blossom out of the ordinary, the everyday. We turned those conversations into our podcast series, ‘A Life Less Ordinary’. We wanted the episodes to showcase the diversity of brilliance coming out of Asia to the rest of the world, honing in on Sri Lanka for Season 1. We also wanted to inspire listeners to take steps, big or small, towards their dreams and unrealized ideas.
The first episode we published was of our conversation with the two first Sri Lankans to summit Mount Everest, Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Pieris. We all know Climbing Everest isn’t an easy feat, but the near insurmountable obstacles begin well before setting foot on Himalayan soil. This episode was packed with lessons on hustle, motivation, and sheer grit, as well as spine-tingling tales of the climb itself.
At the time of recording this episode, only Jayanthi had managed to make it to the summit, despite Johann being with her for the vast majority of that momentous climb in 2016 (tune in to find out just how close he was to achieving his dream). However, I was stoked to learn that he made it to the summit in 2018, becoming the first Sri Lankan man to summit Everest.
Hope you enjoy this first of many revisits of ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ I’ll be sharing over the next few months!
Image credit: Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Pieris, Facebook.
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