Photo Credit: Anna Godg'bidzh/GPO/Flash90

Two weeks ago, Nadav Ben Yehuda received from President Shimon Peres the distinguished service award, for rescuing a Turkish climber in the Himalayas.

Now Ben-Yehuda has climbed 5000 meters (16404.2 ft.) to the summit of Mount Kazbek in the former Sovier Republic of Georgia, and flew there a flag he had received from the President. When he reached the top, to his surprise, Turkish soldiers serving in a multinational force up there called him by name, greeted and hugged him.

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I was touched by the story of the Turkish soldiers’ gratitude, as I had been touched by the story of the heroic rescue, back in May.

Then I started wondering, Wait a minute, the guy climbed up 5000 meters to singularly make it to a mountaintop full of soldiers?

But maybe they had been brought up there by air. Or maybe there’s a perfectly usable road going up to the top, but Ben Yehuda chose the really difficult face of the mountain.

This must be the nightmare of heroic travelers everywhere: that they’ll risk their lives going down some unimaginably dangerous path, through jungles or up mountains or under the face of the Earth, only to reach a destination populated by thousands of utterly civilized dwellers, complete with Starbucks and Gap outlets.

Which can be good, in case their iPhone 5 malfunctions.

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Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.