Determined to conquer the “roof of the world” in May 2016, three Indian climbers did not know that they would remain beneath the blanket of snow and would only be brought home a year later.
In May 2016, four Indian tourists decided to conquer Mount Everest. They hired four Sherpas (a proper noun for the guides on the Everest ascent). However, as they neared the summit, their oxygen tanks began to run out. The Indian tourists were abandoned at an altitude of over 7,000m and had to struggle to survive. In the photo, from left to right: Sunita Hazra, Goutam Ghosh, Paresh Nath, and Subhas Paul. Ms. Hazra was the only one to return. The three men were left behind in the cold snow and ice near the roof of the world.
The photo shows the wife of Mr. Subhas, withered and haggard after her husband was left on the world’s highest mountain for a year.
When the tragedy occurred, the climbing season was almost over. Subsequent climbers all confirmed they had seen the bodies of the Indian men. However, no one dared to think about bringing the bodies down the mountain because it was too costly and risky. Sometimes, recovering a body on the mountain is only done to prove that someone has died (and is not just missing), so that their family can receive certain benefits.
A photo of Paul (left) with his guide while on Mount Everest.
Hope began to emerge when the West Bengal government decided to launch a campaign to bring the bodies of the three Indian men back. In just a few days, before this year’s climbing season ended, the Indian group hired six Sherpas to climb to the location where the men were left last May. The first person they found was Paul, just below Camp 4, at an altitude of nearly 8,000m above sea level, which is also the final resting point for climbers before reaching the summit. It then took the Sherpas 16 hours to carry Paul’s body down to Camp 2, where a helicopter was waiting.
Returning to where Paul’s body was found, two other Sherpas continued their journey up to Camp 4, searching all the abandoned tents along the way in hopes of finding the bodies of the other two men. They were successful. When they saw the body of a man with a missing hand, they knew it was Nath. A childhood firecracker accident had left one of his hands incomplete.
Fierce winds howled as the Sherpas continued on to find Ghosh, preventing them from proceeding further. The rainy season was approaching, and everyone was rushing to get down the mountain before the Nepal government completely banned climbing activities until the next year. Finally, they found Ghosh. His body was frozen in the snow, at an altitude of 8,300m. His lifeless face terrified the Sherpas. So, they used a hood to cover his face before bringing him down to Camp 4. After that, they tightly wrapped Ghosh’s body and pushed, pulled, and slid it down to Camp 2. There, they waited for the helicopter to arrive.
The rescue team claimed that heavy rain and cloudy skies prevented the helicopter from taking off from Camp 2. In reality, they were waiting for the body of another climber from India, who had just died the day before.
While Ghosh’s body was being cremated, his wife removed the colorful bracelets from her wrists. A year after her husband’s death on Everest, she officially became a widow. The calendar in her bedroom was still on May 2016. Before that, she had insisted that her husband was not dead, but only missing. “I will only become a widow if I see his body,” she had once said.
A photo of a body near the summit of Everest.
Around 5,000 people have set foot on the summit of Everest (8,848m high) since the two climbers Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary first did so in 1953. Nearly 300 people have failed in their journey to conquer the mountain and remain on the various paths leading to the “roof of the world.”
Inappropriate nutrition, harsh climate, critically low oxygen levels, chronic exhaustion, multiple days without sleep, limited visibility due to snow, panic from being lost… are all factors that threaten the lives of climbers during their ascent of Everest.
A portrait of Paresh Nath and a photo of his climbing gear store in India.
A portrait of Paresh Nath and a photo of his climbing gear store in India. Before that, Nath and Ghosh went missing during the climb, while Hazra and Paul were becoming exhausted and were forced to descend before their condition became critical. When Paul could not breathe and his hands were freezing despite having an oxygen tank, two Sherpas stayed by his side, and Ms. Hazra was led down by another Sherpa. This Sherpa quickly abandoned her when he saw that his own condition was even more critical than the Indian woman’s. Fortunately, she met other Sherpas and was brought down to Camp 2 shortly after.
Later, another expedition team confirmed they had seen Nath on his way down the mountain. He was conscious, but his eyes were swollen and he couldn’t see anything due to the snow blindness. The next morning, the last day of the 2016 climbing season, Nath couldn’t even lift a bowl of soup. He died at Camp 4, the final stop before the summit. Meanwhile, Ghosh remained somewhere higher up. In the photo, Mr. Debasish Ghosh, Goutam Ghosh’s brother, comes to Kathmandu to receive his brother’s body, a year after he went missing.
A photo of Ghosh’s body, which remained for many days in the morgue after being brought back to India.
Ghosh’s family had sent a letter to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to express their desire for the West Bengal government to launch a campaign to bring his body home. The government finally agreed but kept this information from the families of the missing men. Everything would only go smoothly if the location of the bodies had been confirmed. Therefore, the Ghosh family sought out veteran climbers who had summited Everest many times and received a quote of $40,000 to bring one body home. They sold all their assets and agreed to pay $4,000 upfront before going to Nepal to retrieve the missing men. The photo shows Ghosh’s body, which remained for many days in the morgue after being brought back to India.