logo
Dharamshala: Missing Israeli trekker found after week-long search

Dharamshala: Missing Israeli trekker found after week-long search

Hindustan Times6 days ago

After a week-long search operation, the Israeli tourist who went missing while trekking on the Triund trek in Dharamshala, has been found in a seriously injured condition, police officials said on Sunday. The tourist, identified as Samuel Vengrinovich, was reported missing on June 8. Following the report, a joint search operation was launched by the Kangra police and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF).
According to police, Vengrinovich had set out for the Triund trek on June 6. Kangra additional superintendent of police Hitesh Lakhanpal said, 'After an intense week-long search, the missing Israeli national has been located. He is seriously injured and is being shifted to Tanda Medical College for treatment.'
According to police, the missing trekker was part of a group of 4–5 individuals who had trekked to the snowline area above Triund. During the trek, Vengrinovich reportedly suffered a leg injury and chose to return to base alone while the others stayed back. When the rest of the group returned later and found he had not reached, they promptly alerted the police.
Triund is situated in the laps of Dhauladhar mountains and has the perfect view of the Dhauladhar mountains on one side and the Kangra valley on the other. It is a very popular trekking spot and attracts a lot of tourists every year from India and all over the world.
Earlier this year in February, a foreign tourist from the UK died and another was injured while trekking to the snowline in the Dhauladhar mountains. In another mishap, a British national got injured while trekking in Triund when he accidentally fell into a deep gorge in M

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Bengal students to board Jordan bus to flee Israel
Bengal students to board Jordan bus to flee Israel

Time of India

time2 hours ago

  • Time of India

Bengal students to board Jordan bus to flee Israel

1 2 Kolkata: As the Israel-Iran conflict enters the ninth day with no signs of a climbdown, sleepless and fear-stricken students from Bengal stuck in different cities of Israel are counting the days for their evacuation. While the process is likely to start through Jordan on Sunday, those who couldn't make it to the first list of evacuees waited with bated breath. On Sunday, heavily guarded buses will pick up the evacuees from a number of cities and head towards Jordan. Flights from Amman will bring them back to New Delhi. Priyangana Deb, a resident of Kolkata, who is pursuing post-doctoral research at the Medicine and Health Science Faculty of Tel Aviv University, reached Israel a few months back. As the attacks on Israel intensified, she felt unnerved after a point. Deb listed herself with the embassy for evacuation. "Sirens are nothing new in Israel. But this time it was different. I could not sleep well at night and had to rush to the shelter rooms multiple times, even at night. Even when the sirens are not blaring, a fear of the unknown chases me. Brought up in Kolkata, we have never seen such a thing before," said Deb. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like What Is a Family Trust, and How Do You Set One Up? SmartAsset Learn More Undo "The Israel administration has a number of apps that send periodic notifications. Whenever there is a notification on the app, we have to rush to the shelter room," she added. Despite safety measures, Deb is looking forward to going back home. "I want to go back home now. My family and kids are there in Kolkata. I need to breathe in a secure environment for a while," she said. Deb is constantly in touch with the embassy over the past few days. Barrackpore resident Sayantan Maiti, who is pursuing research in surface chemistry of diamonds at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is also waiting for his name to appear on the evacuee list. Maiti has been in Israel since Nov 2022 and witnessed the wars with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. "This time, the situation is even more dangerous. Cities like Tel Aviv, Be'er Sheva, and Haifa have been hugely affected by missile hits. However, social media has exaggerated it a lot," he said. Maiti felt that iron domes were largely effective in warding off Iranian missiles. "We are still alive because of the Israeli defence system — iron domes and bomb shelters. Direct impacts of missiles are more in number this time as they are huge and more savage," he said.

Homeward bound: City prof starts 1.5k km journey to Mashhad to escape from Iran
Homeward bound: City prof starts 1.5k km journey to Mashhad to escape from Iran

Time of India

time2 hours ago

  • Time of India

Homeward bound: City prof starts 1.5k km journey to Mashhad to escape from Iran

Kolkata: It is a race against time for geography professor Falguni Dey to travel from Astara to Mashhad, through the war-ravaged Iran, where India has already started an evacuation operation. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now It'll be a 1,500 km, 22-hour long journey to Mashhad from where Dey is currently camping now. Hopeful of getting entry through the Nurduz-Agarak border to Armenia, which has allowed hundreds of Indians to cross the border and head back home, Dey had applied for an e-visa with the country. On Friday late evening, Armenia declined his visa application, leaving Dey hapless and desperate. Azerbaijan, which has also been allowing foreign nationals, kept silent on his application as well. Desperate to escape Iran, Dey called up an official at the Indian embassy in Tehran on Friday night. "He suggested I reach Mashhad somehow as the Indian authorities have already started evacuating from there. There is no other way out for me. It is going to be nearly a 1,500 km journey from the northwest of Iran to the west of the country," Dey told TOI over phone. India launched Operation Sindhu earlier this week to evacuate Indians stranded in Iran after Tehran agreed to lift airspace restrictions as a "special gesture". During the evacuation operation, India evacuated 517 nationals from Iran by Saturday morning. Mashhad is close to Iran's border with Turkmenistan, and India started evacuating through a safe air corridor. Virtually penniless, Dey, on Friday night, approached a car driver who agreed to take him on the arduous and dangerous route to Mashhad. "I told him that I can transfer the amount to his bank account only when I am back in India. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now He thought for a brief moment and agreed to take me to Mashhad. He was like a Godsend to me, ready to take a stranger on a 1,500 km journey with just an assurance to be paid later," he said. The 600km stretch from Tabriz in northwest Iran to Tehran was severely damaged after Israeli missile attacks. Drones, quadcopters, and spike-guided missiles bombed large parts of the country. Vibrant and noisy Tehran and the adjoining areas have transformed into abandoned streets amid an eerie silence. "We will try to bypass Tehran. We are not sure if there will be a fresh phase of attack," said Dey. While the internet is cut off in large parts of Iran, Mashhad still has connectivity. "I will be able to receive and send documents only when I am in Mashhad. I hope it will be a little better among many other Indians."

Spotting Purvanchal of 1800s in the Caribbean
Spotting Purvanchal of 1800s in the Caribbean

Hindustan Times

time10 hours ago

  • Hindustan Times

Spotting Purvanchal of 1800s in the Caribbean

It is 2022. I am in the queue at the immigration section in Mumbai airport, holding my passport with a crisp boarding-pass neatly tucked in it. Even though I have made many such trips, the act of playing it cool stays like a muscle memory. I have a fellow traveller who got his passport made especially for this trip. So, he is a bit nervous. Two counters are vacant, and we occupy these. The immigration officer looks like a strict 1990s dad about to check your report card. I throw in a bit of English to assure the officer I haven't sold my ancestral land to fund this trip and never return. The drama is at the other counter. Cricketer Nicholas Pooran, on being asked if he wishes to some day return to his ancestral land to search for his roots, didn't seem very interested. (AFP) 'So, where are you traveling?' the officer asks my friend, even though the boarding pass mentions the destination. 'Sir, West Indies' 'What? There is no country like that' My friend panics. I pitch in, 'Sir, Trinidad & Tobago, that's where we are going'. I say this with a broad smile. The immigration officer isn't amused. I sound like a trafficker. 'Sir, we are going to cover the India vs West Indies series. Check the letter of invitation from the West Indian cricket board,' I build our case further. The familiar palm-tree-on-an-island logo of West Indies on the letterhead finally assuages him. After sufficient inquiry, he stamps the passport. The mechanical sound of the stamp is the sound of success. The year is 1845. The imperial world has just abolished slavery, so there is a huge shortage of workers at the sugarcane plantations. All the tropical islands in the Commonwealth need more hands, including Trinidad & Tobago. So, the colonisers dangle a work agreement to people in British India, especially the Purvanchal region. 'Agreement' gets colloquialised into girmit and the people who sign it are now girmitiyas – mostly outcasts, widowers, landless, and, in general, with not much to lose. After a basic health check, they are bundled into a ship at the Calcutta port. After a 90-day journey via the Cape of Good Hope, they land at Port of Spain, Trinidad's capital. A British clerk asks their names. A guy named Shravan answers in a Maghai accent, 'Sarwan'. The clerk promptly records the phonetic spelling in English. Shravan's descendants bear the mis-spelled last name for generations, one of them being the cricketer Ramnaresh Sarwan. That's how a Shiv Narayan becomes Sivnarine, a Devi Prasad is a Davy Persaud, and so on. There are no last names. They left caste behind in India. The labourers tried to create a caste system in Trinidad, but due to the sheer shortage of women and a lot of inter-marriage, it died out pretty soon. Their religion, music and cuisine did not. And that's how I could have chhole bhature outside the Brian Charles Lara Cricket stadium in Port of Spain. They call it 'double' because, back in the day, they served two bhaturas with chana sandwiched in the middle. I was in Port of Spain with influencers and journalists from India to cover the India versus West Indies cricket series, staying at the same hotel as the players. Such proximity is always fun. At one point, I helped Arshdeep Singh pick the right ingredients for his omelette at the breakfast buffet. And even searched for the right dal tadka with Hardik Pandya. But these are trivial pursuits one can even chance upon in a hotel in Mumbai; hence, being a purvanchali, I was fascinated more by the history of this unique place. For me, it felt like finding the Uttar Pradesh/Bihar of the 1800s preserved in the West Indies. Thankfully, the locals emigrated before the invention of gutka, hence the roads and walls are spotlessly clean. Imagine the Bihar of the 19th century, sans the caste system, paan masala, poor civic sense, but all the amazing food, the music, the sweet dialect, and devotion to their gods. Everyone's great-grandfather was an indentured labourer, everyone started from scratch, with no systemic inequalities, no caste privilege. One can only dream of such utopia. I asked the cricketer Nicholas Pooran if he wishes to some day return to his ancestral land, to search for his roots. He didn't seem very interested. I don't blame him. Notably, the African-Americans celebrate the Day of Emancipation, the day when they were freed from slavery, but the Indo-Carribeans celebrate the Day of Arrival, the day they landed in the country. I asked a bunch of people in a queue at the stadium entrance, who looked of Indian-origin, with a bit of sarcasm, 'So, which team do you support?' They looked at me with some distaste and revealed the maroon jersey. This is the place their grandparents were born, who spoke Creole, not Bhojpuri. For them, I was the village cousin. They were curious to know more about me, but that's about it. They aren't coming back to investigate their roots. That ship, as they say, has sailed. Abhishek Asthana is a tech and media entrepreneur and tweets as @gabbbarsingh. The views expressed are personal.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store