THE WOMAN WHO REFUSED TO GIVE UP: Izabela and Her Journey to the Himalayas
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A classmate who turned to be a frequent customer
I came to know Izabela in one of my Dutch classes 2 years ago. We were 7 or 8 students of different nationalities. Since then, we would meet occasionally to catch up and practice Dutch with each other.
I was the masseur in the group. Back then I have not yet considered massaging as a formal profession and I was thinking which path I should choose. When we met up once on the strands of Blankenberge, I tried to give a massage to all of them. After two years, I would then take massage as a serious business.
On the other hand, I saw her as the pusher in our group. She would always initiate to meet, including creating a Whatsapp group so that everyone could keep in touch. She seemed to have so much passion and energy for a lot of things.
Izabela described herself as a “woman with a strong character who craves adrenaline and constant action, unable to be idle,” during our interview after she went back to Belgium for her expedition in the Himalayas.
That is perhaps one of her passions: going to the mountains. She has a very active lifestyle, and she often goes to the gym, or run and train for her expeditions. But outside this, she balances being a mother to her son and working as an independent in Belgium.
Izabela was born in Poland, and took landscape architecture. She would later find herself working in Belgium.
Izabela Sawicka posting for a picture next to Ama Dablam, which she will climb for the next 5 weeks (photo courtesy of Izabela Sawicka)
My touch helps her heal while her drive and stories inspire me
When I registered myself in 2025 as an independent and set up my massage studio (or house, or meditation room, whatever you want to call it), she immediately booked for a session. After one session, she found herself booking for more sessions and going back despite her busy schedule.
Massage was part her self-care to prepare for her mountaineering expeditions, or for her recovery after a heavy training. Coincidentally, I was also busy with my classes for sports massage in Syntra West. Thus, the techniques I learned at school, I applied to her directly.
Every time she would go to me for a massage, I would try to catch up on how her training is going or how it was going so far with her expeditions.
In September 2025, she mentioned about her climb to the Himalayas and that she wanted to book for a series of massage sessions. I did my best to accommodate her, making sure that I helped her ease her mind and prepare her body for her upcoming mountain climbing. However, she was also so busy with her work and family that we were only able to do one session, and even in that session, I see how stressed and anxious she was about her expedition to the Himalayas.
We wanted to do one last session the night before her flight, but eventually she decided to cancel because she had no time to prepare for her flight.
“So, the massages – did it help you or not?” I asked her during our interview after her expedition.
“Yes, your massages helped me a lot to relax,” she said. “Even the only other person who came from Belgium I was talking to also shared that he also has a masseur. Even after my expedition, I need it again.. look here,” she pointed out to the back of her shoulders.
Mount Everest, Ama Dablam and the Himalayas
I would often see her Instagram page posting now and then about her trip in the Himalayas. At first, I often interchanged the Himalayas and Everest. I was wrong. Mount Everest is only one of the mountains that can be found in the Himalayas, which are a mountain system between the plateaus of Tibet and the Indian subcontinent.
During our interview, Izabela discussed that with her recent expedition her focus was to climb Ama Dablam (+6,800m) and Lobuche Peak (+6,100m), because she wanted to test the waters, and see what she would be needing to prepare for Everest.
Although Everest is the tallest and probably most popular at +8,800 meters, Ama Dablam is not something to laugh about. According to Himalayan Database, the ascent rate (percentage of people who reached the summit) for Ama Dablam between 1950 and 2009 ranged from 37,5% to 54,4% depending on whether one took the commercial route or the non-commercial route.
In a 1983 publication of the American Alpine Club, Sue Giller wrote as follows: “Ama Dablam has been called ‘the most beautiful mountain in the world’, and to the Sherpas, it is itself a god. Viewed from Pangboche, its ridges sweep gracefully upwards, drawing the eye to its symmetrical pinnacle of a summit. A mountaineer’s mountain, it inspires a desire to climb it in all who see it. We were grateful for the opportunity to dance attendance upon its majestic flanks and briefly to share the view from its summit with the mountain gods. A nearly perfect climb on the nearly perfect mountain.
According to Seven Summit Treks, the operator of the expedition that Izabela joined: “Ama Dablam, popularly known as the ‘Matterhorn of the Himalaya’ is one of the most gorgeous mountains in the world located in the Khumbu range of Eastern Nepal”.
Preparation and training for her expedition
Just by looking at the pictures, with its majestic colors of blue and white and all shades at the top, the Himalayas reminded me of the Swiss Alps. I can imagine how majestic it would be to actually see it in person. And although majestic mountains like those in the Himalayas are beautiful and breath-taking, it can also literally take one’s breath away if one is not careful or not properly prepared.
“Somebody died from Korea and I saw it in front of my eyes,” recounted Izabela during our interview. “I told myself: it could have been me,” she added.
Izabela also mentioned the sadness and fear she felt due to the recent incident of seven people being buried under snow, and they cannot find the bodies until today.
At the same time, she felt she was lucky because it was not her, even though she was the only woman in her group and she had prior experiences climbing mountains previously.
The only rose among the thorns: Izabela is the only woman in her group who climbed Ama Dablam in the Himalayas on October 2025. Photo courtesy of: Izabela Sawicka
She followed a strict routine of training at least 3 hours a day 3 months before the expedition, which included fitness, biking, running and swimming. The entire planning to the Himalayas took 13 months. She emphasized how she could not even eat chips or drink wine. To add to that, she is also a pescatarian and she had to carefully choose a variety of vegetables and fish to her diet. She emphasized eating a lot of spinach, avocados, fruit shake and vegetables rich in protein.
On top of her mountaineering expeditions, she also went to marathons and sports events. She shared her experience of running a 34-kilometer marathon in the mountains of Switzerland, where she placed 22nd out of 3000+ participants in June 2025.
Aside from the physical preparations, she also had to balance her time, managing her responsibilities with her job and her role as a mother.
The curse and blessing of being a mountaineer
She boarded a plane to Nepal, where she met the organizers, Seven Summit, of the expedition and later on the sherpa who assisted her to reach the top, who she said was important for her to survive the mountain.
Not everyone spoke fluently a common language that both parties could understand. Despite this, the locals from the region were very friendly. Being friendly too, she did not have big problems with communication. They even took the pleasure of taking photos of her touring the city days before the expedition.
“Our first stop is the National Park,” she recounted while showing me the videos she took. “I told myself when I saw it, ‘I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming!’ And I told myself, Izabela, it’s not a dream, you’re alive… even up to now, I still don’t believe that I went there,” she confessed further.
Izabela also shared her experiences of meeting and interacting with people from various nationalities, including China, Kenya, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Korea, California and more. There was also one mountaineer from Belgium whom she had a good connection with considering that they both came from the same country.
“In the mountains, we spoke another language… we became spiritual, like looking only for stars, appreciating the silence… There was this realisation that not everybody could climb mountains as high as where we were at that point,” she expressed.
In the camp base, food was served and it was important for her to eat nutritious meals because later on at higher altitudes, it would be hard to find a decent diet to keep the body going. “I drink everyday garlic soup,” she said. She never had a problem with the food served. It was part of the package that she had to pay.
“How much did you have to pay overall for your expedition?” She mentioned in the range of around 12,000 euros.
She also shared the struggles of eating at higher altitudes. “We eat only apple or what we have in our bags,” detailed Izabela. “In higher altitudes, I couldn’t sleep properly and even my bowel movements are affected,” she recounted. Because there is an abundance of ice at the top, she would often hydrate by drinking melted snow and consuming hot tea.
It can go as low as 20 degrees celsius below freezing on top, so she had to sleep always with all her clothes and layers and layers of jacket. “I never take my clothes off. Never. Sometimes I even take my gloves on while sleeping.” She even shared that she could never take a proper shower. She shown me a picture of pail of water that she used that day. That was all she had, I assumed.
Route Map of the Ama Dablam Expedition taken from sevensummittreks.com
Her entire trip lasted 32 days, walking, trekking and climbing. “I have bad days and good days,” she recounted when I asked what were the difficult moments during the climb.
“But during those bad days, I would just cry the whole day, and I would not stop. It was something strange… There was this day, when I reached camp 1 between 5,600m to 5,900m and I felt very bad and I wanted to vomit. I was fucking tired, I had to fight with myself, then I started to feel this freezing cold in my back and hands and I didn’t have time to even change clothes, because we need to act fast before it gets too late to go safely in the tent. But I had to do it so slow because I could not force myself to go, then I started to vomit.”
“Was there a point where you thought of giving up?” I asked.
“Give up? I never say this,” she immediately answered, as if I was asking a strange question.
“What helped you survive then? What is the number one thing that helped you survive?”
“My mind, I think,” she answered with conviction. “I always told myself: Izabela, you cannot give up now. You can cry later but not here in the Himalayas,” she further added.
“So, you never give up. You are a fighter,” I concluded.
“Yes, until the last moment,” she emphasized.
Life after the Himalayas
“There was a moment where all the mountaineers gathered together in one camp and each of us was asked the reason why we came there, and nobody could answer why. Why did we choose Ama Dablam? We don’t know. She is so beautiful, but also dangerous and technical,” she shared with me when we were talking about her reflections on her expedition on Ama Dablam.
She shared how the expedition changed her mindset and saw the large difference between her normal and safe life here compared to her survivalist life in the mountains. “I like my life. It’s nice… go to school, meet with people, go to fitness, go to swimming, to my work – work with people... but in the mountain, you are free. You don’t need anything. Just survive,” she explained further. “One month in the mountain, people from the Himalayas say, is equivalent to 10 years in the city. It changes you a lot”, she added.
“But when you were there, you were questioning why you were there,” I told her.
“Yes, and when I came back here, I long to go back again. It’s like adrenaline, a drug. It’s addicting,” she added.
It was November 21, on a Friday evening, when I was interviewing. She was back to Belgium after 9 days and she confessed that she has not yet completely recovered.
“I still feel strange. I am still confused, like when I take a shower, I am in my bed, I feel so good. I feel like I am in paradise,” she explained as she shared how she appreciated more what she has now in Belgium. “And I eat a lot all the time,” adding further.
She mentioned that she went to Belgium earlier than planned. “I was back 2 days early from expedition. The weather was very bad, and they closed the base camp on 9 november. I decided to book a new flight and not wait anymore for 1 week.”
“What were you thinking while you were on your flight back?” I asked.
“I was so happy I was still alive,” she answered. “And I will be back to see my friends, my son.”
Future plans
“Can you say that you have already achieved your dream, or you want to go further, like going to Mount Everest?”
“I need to wait to answer that question,” she said. She confessed that she wanted to have a break, and give time for her son, and of course, for herself. To be able to do again what she likes, eat what she wants.
She shared her doubts of continuing further. As she recounted what happened to her colleague whom she saw died in front of her eyes, she began to express the dangers and risks of her hobby, and that she had a responsibility to keep herself safe for the sake of her child. “There are no mountains anymore for me,” she confessed to me at one point.
“At least not for the next few months,” I told her with some encouragement.
As someone who was there to help her recover, I also realise that I am not just there to massage her. I am also there to help her process what happened and support her emotionally and mentally.
We discussed on the importance of being calm, and enjoying the present moment, and not dwelling on future uncertainties. She shared her plans in the future, and concluded with a sense of optimism and a commitment to living a fulfilling life, balancing her passion for adventure with her responsibilities as a mother and professional.
And, of course, she did not forget to book for a massage.