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I started mountaineering in 2006; it began with a few walks around the lakes in England. Gradually I started rock climbing and ended up heading to the Alps. In 2012, I went on my first – and only – expedition to the Karakoram, a mountain range between the borders of Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan.

I was with two experienced mountaineers – they’d climbed several 8000-metre peaks. We were planning to climb to the top of Spantik, at 7031 metres. They knew I was a novice and looked after me. During the first part of the climb I’d had my fair share of altitude sickness, but as we walked, I acclimatised and the sickness wore off. We climbed for about 21 days, but I never made the summit. We’d had good weather through the whole trip, but by the time we’d got close to the peak we’d been going for 12 hours and I was exhausted and hypothermic. The summit was 2 or 3 hours away and I knew I wouldn’t make it, so I turned back.

On the way down, it took us two days to reach base camp. From there we had two more days of walking to get to the nearest village. It was tough, each day we had to cover more than 20 kilometres over undulating, rocky terrain, you had to be careful – it was as taxing as any day previously.

Looking down on myself

I was on my own a lot during this time, my friends were ahead of me. There was a lot to see of the mountain, but it was very silent – you had a lot of time with your own thoughts.

Suddenly I started to feel really strange. The whole world took on an ethereal appearance. The mountains around me began contracting, and then expanding. I started to feel like I had come out of my body, and was looking down at myself, sort of from behind.

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I tried to assess my situation. I checked my vitals. But I knew I wasn’t sick, my heart rate was fine. I wasn’t dehydrated and I’d had enough food. I tried to rationalise it all. I thought initially that I just needed to concentrate. I needed to make sure every step was the right one. I didn’t want to fall off an edge.

Time felt as if it had slowed down. I was still making good progress, but I would head to a boulder and it would feel like it had taken an hour when my watch said it was 5 minutes.

These feelings persisted. I pinched myself, and kept trying to make sure I wasn’t asleep and dreaming all of this. At one point I tripped and cut my hand – the sight of the blood made me sure it wasn’t a dream. I tried to slow my breathing and remain calm. Although at first it was scary, at other times I felt elated and strangely at peace with my surroundings. I felt like there was heat emanating from me. Was it an aura?

Hearing a voice

There was no one around me, but the whole time I felt like there was someone watching me – a presence. Then it felt as if it was talking me through things. It was asking me to think carefully, to pick my way through the glacier; it was helping me, guiding me towards where I should be.

This lasted almost 9 hours. I asked myself at one point “am I dead?”. This was a difficult trek, you could have just fallen into a crevasse and died and no one would ever have found you. It was only when I passed someone else on the mountain that I knew I was definitely alive.

After a while I started to get used to it. I figured that this voice was coming from myself. There was nothing I could do about it, so I just carried on walking forward. I still felt like this, even when I met up with the others. It was only after a good night’s sleep that everything went back to normal.

It was a really personal experience, and I didn’t tell my friends about it until quite some time later. Since it happened, I’ve looked into it, and found it often happens to people when they’re pushed to their limits.

I’ve not experienced anything similar again, even though I’ve done other climbs. I haven’t done any more expeditions, though. After I came back, I took a break. I’d got some frostbite and had to let my body recover. But the hunger has come back and I think I will give it another go. If the same thing were to happen again, I would look forward to it. I was scared at the time, but looking back I’m glad it happened, it was an experience like no other.