[Every trekking season in Nepal produces tales of physical endurance and heartbreak. They are rarely as extreme, though, as that of Mr. Liang, who was released from the hospital on Monday. He arrived having dropped from 150 pounds to 84 pounds, his hair infested with lice and with maggots eating the flesh of one foot. Doctors said he most likely survived because he was able to replenish the salt in his body and drink melted snow.]
By Rajneesh Bhandari
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Dr. Chakra Raj Pandey, left, medical director at Grande International Hospital,
checked on Liang Sheng-Yueh on Thursday. Mr. Liang and his girlfriend,
Liu Chen Chi, were lost for over a month. She died three days before rescuers
found them. Credit Narendra Shrestha/European Pressphoto Agency
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KATHMANDU, Nepal — The rescue team had nearly
given up when it spotted distant figures on a ledge.
Over the course of 47 days, since two young
Taiwanese trekkers wandered off the trail in a snowstorm, the searchers had
tried almost everything: aerial surveys by helicopter, bushwhacking through
deep forest, trying to follow the movements of vultures.
The father of Liang Sheng-Yueh, one of the
missing students, had even consulted an astrologer. But they found nothing.
Alerted by a fellow searcher who saw what he
assumed were two bodies on the ledge, the leader of the rescue team, Madhab
Basnet, carefully made his way to the site, using a handmade ladder the
rescuers had quickly fashioned. When he reached the ledge, he was shocked when
one of the two, an emaciated and badly weakened young man, spoke to him.
He said that his girlfriend, Liu Chen Chi,
19, had died three days before.
“He said his girlfriend was in a lot of pain
and grief,” Mr. Basnet said. “He said he ate salt and water and that’s how he
survived.”
Every trekking season in Nepal produces tales
of physical endurance and heartbreak. They are rarely as extreme, though, as
that of Mr. Liang, who was released from the hospital on Monday. He arrived
having dropped from 150 pounds to 84 pounds, his hair infested with lice and
with maggots eating the flesh of one foot. Doctors said he most likely survived
because he was able to replenish the salt in his body and drink melted snow.
It was not immediately clear where he got the
salt, but Mr. Liang was an experienced climber who might have carried an extra
supply in case of such a disaster.
Ms. Liu appeared to have died of starvation,
said Dr. Mani Maharjan, who performed an autopsy.
Dr. Chakra Raj Pandey, medical director at
Grande International Hospital, said Mr. Liang at one point turned to him with a
strange request.
“He asked me to provide him with a book that
had maps,” Dr. Pandey said. “It appeared to me that he wanted to look at a map
and recall his trekking journey and probably find out where the journey went
wrong.”
The two hikers, both students at National Dong
Hwa University in Taiwan, arrived in Nepal for their trek in February and were
last seen on March 9.
After becoming disoriented in a snowstorm,
they tried to follow the path of a river, in hopes that it would lead them to a
settlement, Mr. Liang told his rescuers and local news media immediately after
the rescue. Since then, he has declined all interview requests at the behest of
the Taiwanese government.
As they made their way along the river, they
slid into a ravine and became stuck on the ledge, where they took shelter in a
cave. They remained there for more than six weeks. On either side of the ledge
were steep rock faces, so they could not move up or down, and snow was falling
outside, Mr. Liang told the rescuers. After 10 days, their food ran out, he
said.
Their parents, alarmed not to have heard from
them, hired a search party on March 26, and the team set off the next day and
continued to search for nearly two weeks. When that failed, they a second
search began.
The lost trekkers were first spotted by Dawa
Tamang, 55, a farmer who was helping the rescue effort. “I went by using a
machete in the jungle,” he said. “I went by the side of the river. It was risky
for me to go through. I might have lost my life as well.”
But then he spied the two figures on the
ledge.
“I didn’t touch them,” Mr. Tamang said. “I
came back and went to call my friends because I was told not to touch the
bodies. I just saw them and then came back.”
They built a ladder out of a dead tree,
expecting to retrieve the bodies. That is when Mr. Basnet descended to the
ledge and, to his surprise, found Mr. Liang alive but too weak to stand. They
fed him noodles hoping to build up his strength.
“We were shocked and afraid,” Mr. Basnet
said. “We were thinking he was dead.”
They carried Mr. Liang to safety, while the
young woman’s body was airlifted from the ledge.
Over six days in the hospital, Mr. Liang
gained 13 pounds, the doctor said.
“I feel relaxed now, but can’t recall the
last 47 days,” he told a reporter from The Himalayan Times.
He celebrated his 21st birthday in the
company of journalists, telling them that he had survived only thanks to the
prayers of others.
“If you look at his eyes and his face, you
can see that he is excited about a new life,” Dr. Pandey said. “This is called
rebirth. But the happiness of rebirth is mixed with the loss of his girlfriend
and the tragedy of staying in the mountains and enduring so much pain.”
Ellen Barry contributed reporting from New
Delhi.
