He scaled Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in South America, oblivious that trouble was brewing back home in Egypt.

CNN: How a 'scrawny asthmatic' climbed the world's mountains

In fact, in June he's planning to climb the last of the seven summits, North America's tallest mountain, Mount McKinley or Denali, in Alaska.

CNN: Walking to the South Pole

Don't ask what's the tallest mountain in the United States and leave out the Fourth, Fifth or Sixth Amendment, or the process to register to vote, for that matter.

NPR: New Citizenship Test Gets Dry Run

To the west are the saw-edges of glacier-encrusted rock and ice, serrated by more than 30 jagged peaks heavy with snow, the highest of which is 6, 768m-high Huascaran, the tallest mountain in the tropics.

BBC: Trekking Peru��s Santa Cruz trail

As we head back out into the paddy fields, he lights a clove-scented cigarette and points to the shadowy, still-active volcano that shares its name with him - Gunung Agung, the tallest, most sacred mountain on Bali, from which rivers are said to flow and the volcanic soil gains its rich fertility.

BBC: High spirits in Bali