The first Saudi to reach the summit of Mount Everest planted his nation's flag atop the peak May 21. Farouq Al Zuman, 30, says he feels more pride for his country than for himself.
After Zuman reached the summit and raised the flag, he recited the Muslim call to prayer and spent some time, as he put it, "just running around" with excitement. Mount Everest, on the border of Nepal and China, is the world's highest peak.
Zuman, who works for a public relations firm in Saudi Arabia, says he wants to encourage young people to follow their dreams, just as he did.
Zuman's path to Everest started when his father introduced him to sports as a toddler. He swam, learned tae kwon do and played soccer. But it wasn't until Zuman moved to the northwestern U.S. for college that he fell in love with climbing mountains, he says.
"I was in the United States for a long time, on the West Coast, in Oregon and Washington. So a lot of mountains were around me in that environment," Zuman says. "I would say that the environment that I was going to school at — it was surrounded by all these mountains, and so it was just beautiful to climb and see it."
Zuman has scaled Mount Shasta in California and Washington's Mount Rainier, and he was taking in a spectacular sunrise on top of Hawaii's Mount Haleakala when he got the idea to tackle Everest.
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