The List

A public record of things I will do. Not goals, not projects, those live elsewhere. This is the other kind: the things that, if I reached the end without them, would have left the life unfinished. It is, deliberately, pure adventure. Sky, sea, mountains, machines. It is here in public so that I can be held to it.

Each item is annotated with what it actually takes, because a list you say out loud should have no quiet impossibilities hiding in it.

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SKY

1. Skydiving The gateway. Almost everything else in this section branches off it. The path runs tandem jump → AFF (Accelerated Freefall) → solo licence (~25 jumps for an A-licence). Dubai is one of the best places on earth to start. Skydive Dubai's Palm drop zone puts the whole coastline under your feet. Everything below marked "needs jumps" is unlocked here.

2. Paragliding Foot-launched free flight under a soft wing. Can be done tandem immediately or as a full pilot course. The gentlest entry into flying yourself.

3. Paramotoring A paraglider wing plus a gasoline-powered backpack motor, the closest thing to strapping an engine to your back and taking off from flat ground. Requires certification and your own gear. Realistically flown in the UAE's designated desert areas, not over Downtown, the airspace around the Burj Khalifa sits under DXB's approach corridors and is closed to hobby aircraft.

4. Wingsuit flying The "Red Bull suit." You do not get to start here: training requires roughly 200 prior skydives, so this sits firmly downstream of item 1. The reward is true horizontal flight, gliding, not just falling.

5. BASE jumping The lethal capstone of the sky section. BASE = Building, Antenna, Span (bridge), Earth (cliff). It carries an order-of-magnitude higher fatality rate than skydiving and is only approached after deep skydiving and wingsuit experience. On the list with eyes fully open.

6. Private Pilot's Licence (PPL) Fly a fixed-wing aircraft solo and legally. Typically ~40–60 flight hours plus ground school and exams. Several flight schools operate out of the UAE. The prerequisite for item 7.

7. Own a small Cessna A personal aircraft, a Cessna 152 or 172 (the 172 is the most-produced aircraft in history). Follows the PPL and is gated mainly by money rather than skill.

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SEA

8. Scuba certification Making it official. PADI Open Water, then Advanced Open Water. Already a diver, so this is formalising what I do; one of the fastest wins on the list, and easily done out of Dubai/Fujairah.

9. Flyboard / water jetpack Hydroflight, water pumped under pressure lifts you above the surface so you can fly and dive on a jet of water. Quick to try, widely available on the UAE coast.

10. Sail a boat for several days Multi-day passage under sail, learn enough to skipper, or charter with a crew, and live aboard for days at a stretch.

11. A week aboard a tanker or large cargo ship The one with a story behind it: shipping is in the family, and it's the subject I'm studying through the ICS. At least seven days at sea on a working merchant vessel. Genuinely arrangeable, freighter passages can be booked as a supernumerary passenger.

12. An 8+ day cruise A proper long-haul cruise, eight days minimum.

13. Antarctica, properly Not skirting the edge from a sub-Antarctic port, feet on the actual continent. The standard route is an expedition cruise from Ushuaia with continental landings; the deeper versions reach the interior or the Pole.

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MOUNTAINS

14. UK National Three Peaks The highest peak in each of the three British nations, classically climbed within 24 hours:

• Ben Nevis (Scotland), 1,345 m
• Scafell Pike (England), 978 m
• Snowdon / Yr Wyddfa (Wales), 1,085 m

These are hard hikes, not technical climbs, a fit weekend. The nearest win on the list, and likely the first thing crossed off.

15. The Seven Eight-Thousanders The headline of the entire list, and the thing that could genuinely kill me.

Of the world's fourteen peaks above 8,000 m, this is a focused set centred on the Karakoram, the top three highest on Earth, plus all five of Pakistan's giants (K2 counts for both):

Peak	Height	Range / Location
Everest	8,849 m	Himalaya · Nepal / China
K2	8,611 m	Karakoram · Pakistan / China
Kangchenjunga	8,586 m	Himalaya · Nepal / India
Nanga Parbat	8,126 m	Himalaya · Pakistan
Gasherbrum I (Hidden Peak)	8,080 m	Karakoram · Pakistan / China
Broad Peak	8,051 m	Karakoram · Pakistan / China
Gasherbrum II	8,035 m	Karakoram · Pakistan / China

The geography. Four of the seven (K2, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum I and II) ring a single glacier junction in Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan called Concordia (where the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers meet), nicknamed the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods. Nowhere else on the planet packs that many giants into so small a space. Nanga Parbat stands alone ~200 km to the west; Everest and Kangchenjunga sit far east in Nepal, the two deliberate exceptions, kept for being the roof of the world.

The risk, unembellished. Death rates vary by source depending on how they count (deaths per summit vs per attempt vs per expedition, and cutoff date), and the recent commercial boom has lowered the ratios. The absolute tolls don't lie:

• K2, "the Savage Mountain," the deadliest of the seven. Roughly 96 deaths against ~800 summits as of August 2023. The historical death-to-summit rate ran as high as ~42%; even recent figures show more than one expedition in five suffering a fatality. No easy route exists.
• Kangchenjunga. Remote and brutal; fatality rate cited anywhere from ~13% to ~29%.
• Nanga Parbat, "the Killer Mountain." ~21% fatality rate; it earned the name killing dozens before anyone summited.
• Everest. The most deaths in raw numbers (300+) but, per climber, the safest of the seven by a wide margin, only because thousands climb it.
• Broad Peak, Gasherbrum I & II are the comparatively survivable three; GII is often called one of the more approachable 8,000ers. "Survivable" is relative, people still die on all three.

For scale: as of 2025, fewer than 50 people in all of history have summited all fourteen 8,000ers, and fewer than 20 did it without supplemental oxygen.

Suggested order within the seven. You don't start at the top. The realistic build is years of altitude experience (6,000 m → 7,000 m peaks) first, then a comparatively approachable 8,000er such as Gasherbrum II or Broad Peak, before working up to the truly lethal ones (K2, Kangchenjunga, Nanga Parbat) last, with the most experience behind you. Everest sits in the middle technically, though its altitude is its own danger.

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MACHINES

16. Motorcycle licence The gateway to the two below. A "this year" item.

17. Ride a giant tourer A full-size touring motorcycle. Two flavours, pick on the day:

• The smooth giant · Honda Gold Wing (1,833 cc, butter-smooth flat-six), or the Triumph Rocket 3 (2,458 cc, the largest engine in any production motorcycle, period).
• The deafening giant · a Harley-Davidson or Indian bagger with loud pipes; the "everyone goes deaf" V-twin thunder.

18. Ride a Kawasaki Ninja H2R The wildest production motorcycle ever built: a supercharged ~300 hp engine, no mirrors, no indicators, track-only, and it sounds like a jet taking off. The closest thing to a screaming, ear-splitting machine you can actually get on. Hardest to access (you can't simply rent one; it's a track-day-with-the-right-connections affair), but it's the sound itself.

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The Sequence · where this actually starts

This year, low barrier. Scuba certification · motorcycle licence · flyboard · an 8-day cruise · the UK Three Peaks · first tandem skydive. Clear five or six of these and the list stops being theoretical, it becomes something visibly underway.

Build-up · needs a gateway first. Wingsuit (after the jumps) · PPL → own a Cessna · paramotor certification · the giant tourer and the H2R (after the licence) · multi-day sailing · the week aboard a cargo ship.

Lifetime / grail. The seven eight-thousanders · Antarctica · the BASE jump · owning the Cessna.

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Pure adventure. On the record. Watch.