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Episode details

World Service,11 Aug 2016,49 mins

Back to the Mountain That Killed Mum

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Available for over a year

Thirty years ago Julie Tullis became the first British woman to reach the summit of K2 - the second highest mountain in the world and one of the most challenging for climbers. As Julie descended, she was caught in a storm and died. Now her son, Chris and daughter, Lindsay have made an emotional journey back to K2 to mark the anniversary of their mother's death. Raquel de Oliveira grew up in the biggest favela in Rio de Janeiro, Rocinha. In the 1980s her boyfriend was one of the area's most notorious drug dealers and after his death she took over his role. Having turned her back on crime many years ago she has now written a novel which draws on her experience. Lera Auerbach is an internationally celebrated composer, poet, and visual artist. She was born in the Ural Mountains on the border between Russia and Siberia in what was then the Soviet Union. She wrote her first opera at just twelve years old and embarked on her first international piano tour aged seventeen. It was on this tour that she took the life-changing decision to defect and stay in America. Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg from Switzerland have flown around the world in a solar-powered aircraft without using a single drop of fuel. During the journey of 25,000 miles, the plane was in the air for nearly 500 hours and the trip was carried out in a series of legs which altogether took 17 months. Image: Climbing up K2 Credit: K2: Touching the Sky

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