He had solved the Great Mystery. A spate of missing trekkers (the latest being American national Justin Alexander Shetler) in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh has become a matter of acute embarrassment for the External Affairs Ministry. The sadhu now claimed that the last time he saw Alexander was after the trio had stopped for tea on their way down from the holy lake. With him was Brijeshwar Kunwar, an engineer from Bangalore who was on holiday climbing a nearby mountain and had offered his skills to help. Searching for the ever-elusive Truth about life. Mind me, I never met Justin. The valley may appear idyllic, but it holds a dark past. The one where he (so very subtly) expressed his reservations about that trip. A drug addict with a sick mind. But Alexander was also adept in the more contemplative forms of awareness, including Brown’s practice of returning to a single square foot in the wild, a “sit spot,” to listen and notice slight changes in the environment. “It’s like Death Valley,” Kunwar says. Was Justin simply too curious to have noticed it? “I didn’t want to persuade him not to go,” recalls Gapon, but he was concerned. Walking alongside was an American man, 35-year-old Justin Alexander, a seasoned traveler and experienced outdoorsman who’d impressed Gapon with his wilderness survival skills, having just spent weeks living in a mountain cave. He has not been seen since September 3rd, when he was photographed with some hikers while returning from his trek. So, he could teach Justin how to end his. He shared and gave back to the community, wherever he went. Above his final blog post, Alexander had attached a video. At around 13,500 feet, the icy moraine produces no trees for either shelter or firewood. The trekkers said Justin looked exhausted and ill. I have traveled in the past and was always a concern of mine, not for me but for my family. After Bruno Muschalik, a backpacker from Poland, went missing in the summer of 2015, his father maintained that local drug mafias were to blame. It was a journey of learning. Others were drawn to what his adventures represented: Alexander was minimalist but not rejectionist. On the surface, Alexander embodied the “I quit my job to travel” trope, and he amassed a horde of followers—more than 11,000 on his Instagram account alone. Justin left with the Baba around the 24th of August 2016. There, Alexander met a dreadlocked foreigner who played a bamboo flute and said, in a thick German accent, that he had been living in India for the past 20 years—“a simple life, with few possessions,” Alexander wrote online in admiration. She found his final post “distressing” and worried that he was pushing himself too far. Above the drawing, scribbled in black pen, Alexander had written, “Happiness comes from the freedom and capability to dream a life into reality.”. The following year it was Polish national Bruno Muschalik who disappeared. "I've been living in some caves in the Indian Himalayas for the last couple weeks," Justin Alexander posted on Instagram, including this photo of the inside of his cave. While in Parvati, Justin lived in a cave for about a month, in solitude, suffering from cold-exposure, sub nutrition and the overall hard living conditions he submitted himself to. India: Update on Justin Alexander, missing in Parvati Valley since 04 September 2016. (Photo: Courtesy of Andrey Gapon). One Israeli man lived in the valley for decades, growing and dealing hash, getting married and having a child, until he was arrested for overstaying his visa. And he invited Justin to join him on a pilgrimage to the remote Mantalai lake, to meditate. In the first post on his travel blog, Adventures of Justin, he wrote: “I am running from a life that isn’t authentic…I’m running away from monotony and towards novelty; towards wonder, awe, and the things that make me feel vibrantly alive.” He spent the next two-and-a half years on the road, backpacking through South America and Asia, and driving his motorcycle around the United States. Reeb didn’t believe the story either. He’d packed the bag neatly with some souvenirs, his motorcycle insurance, and his passport. Now Alexander was embarking on a three-day trek to a holy site called Mantalai Lake, where he would camp under the stars with few supplies. Accident or foul play? After a frantic two weeks of searching, few leads remained. Three days after Skeels and Reeb filed the report, police and a small search team that included Skeels landed by helicopter along the trail below Mantalai Lake. Justin disappeared mysteriously with a Naga Baba (sadhu -- "holy man"). “India inspires in Westerners such intense emotion that it sometimes causes in travelers a kind of delirium, a madness that vanishes spontaneously when they return to their home country,” writes Régis Airault, a psychiatrist who worked for the French consulate in Bombay and published a book in 2000 called Fous de l’Inde—or Crazy in India. He went on to teach at a children’s camp associated with the school. But beneath Alexander’s glamorous tales was a person searching for higher meaning, sometimes at the expense of sensibility. Strapped to the back of the motorcycle, with a white star painted over each ear, was Alexander’s helmet. The media often reports on such disappearances. Most simply vanished without a trace in this one sliver of the subcontinent. Many see the Parvati Valley as a stage or even the culmination of their quest for enlightenment. Nearby, they also found a black waterproof backpack cover, a gray scarf, and a red butane lighter. Missing trekkers have cast a shadow on Himachal Pradesh's booming tourism business A spate of missing trekkers (the latest being American national Justin Alexander Shetler) in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh has become a matter of acute … Skeels and Kunwar scrambled down the scree and slippery rock to the riverbank. Others deliberately flock to holy centers in India to study meditation, yoga, and spirituality and become enamored of yogis or gurus, often dressing up as a priest or sadhu themselves. Alongside, bodies are burned at designated ghats, concrete steps that fringe the river, where fires consume flesh in round-the-clock cremations. Over the course of his 35 years of age he searched everywhere for a higher meaning. In his hand he clutched his flute-staff. The sadhu was short and slim, wore a saffron dhoti (a wrap around his waist), and had long, matted dreadlocks characteristic of Hindu ascetics. Skeels and McElroy thought it was a strange coincidence the sadhu had supposedly killed himself days before his remand was set to expire, in a valley where the police make an effort to avoid drawing attention to the mysterious disappearances of tourists in their jurisdiction. As if Justin’s ghost was haunting me, but without scaring me. Either accidental or pushed by a third-party. Living with “primitive” tribes. CR seemed to be suspicious of the baba. Alexander instantly impressed McElroy with his deep knowledge and dedication, and the pair would head out on expeditions tracking wolf packs on foot. He’s a world traveller and does lots of adventures. Rather than reporting the American missing to the police, the porter and the sadhu descended to Khir Ganga and said nothing. And to his travels and incredible personal experiences. Just after 7 p.m. on October 21, the police officer in charge of Rawat’s post stepped outside to relieve himself. “I think.”, Over his stay in the valley cave, Alexander’s curiosity in the sadhu way of life turned deeper. Police were called when neighbors reported a woman having sex with her pit bull in her backyard in broad daylight. He was walking alone. There was a first-aid kit and an extensive array of survival items. A coroner … The waters that course from source to valley mouth are perpetually vicious, but when fed by monsoon rains and melting snow, the river morphs into a torrential beast. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. his mom & i begun the search. A sick soul. And he ignored what his instinct was telling him: that all this smelled of danger, that things were not as they seemed. But he assures me that he is the real thing.”. Through their investigation, the police who oversee the Parvati Valley favored explanations that didn’t point to another murder of a foreigner in their district. Not to renounce the world or become enlightened but to wander alone in these majestic Himalaya,” he wrote. Now he knew that might never happen. They had emailed and messaged frequently while Alexander was traveling, but she had a “foreboding” feeling about the sadhu. It was hard. “Justin led a life that many people wanted to lead,” Skeels remembers. To have your remains carried downstream by the holy waters is a blessing that frees your soul from the endless and torturous cycle of reincarnation. “I think he wanted to push himself even beyond his own norm, and it probably snowballed into doing things that were more and more risky,” McElroy says. To my brother and my friend, all my love 'til we meet again. Lee remembers discussions with Alexander about whether he was selling his adventures, posting them online for an audience rather than fully living them. The Baba had passed by the hikers, some time earlier. She told her son that she was worried about his plan but didn’t try to convince him not to go. Those who aim higher. The technique is to grab and release branches to gradually slow your fall, but Alexander missed some, rag-dolled the last 20 feet, and slammed into the ground, narrowly avoiding cracking his skull on nearby rocks. CR seemed to be suspicious of the baba. “It’s like a bomb,” Mittal says. Some of the missing are presumed murdered; in 2000, a British man, his fiancée, and her teenage son were brutally attacked while camping above the Parvati Valley. He followed in hope of learning the secrets of the holy man, his magic ways. All I’ve assumed about him was based on his writings and on other travelers’ opinions and interviews. Unfortunately the Parvati Valley is also known for hashish consumption, mostly among the hippie foreigners who go there in search of new-age-drug-induced enlightenment, and dance to the sound of trance music till they drop. (Photo: @adventuresofjustin/Instagram), Still, the American man visited Rawat’s hut often. As the first week of the search continued, the best hope for information remained with the sadhu, who was being held in remand in a cell in the valley’s small station. Alexander was confident about his journey, but something was weighing on him as well. Many other travelers have disappeared, over the years. He lived alone, in the wild, at a very early age. “You couldn’t help but think that he was going to wander around the corner, all skinny and emaciated, and say, ‘Tom! The list of the somehow “peculiar” people, who don’t strictly follow the rules and patterns of common social behaviour. No other details were released. What are you doing here?’” Even long after Alexander disappeared, Lee still saw a window of possibility that the American still might reappear. All the gruesome details of the affair pointed to foul play. Those Westerners who look for spiritual experiences wherever they can find them, either in a hash pipe or by emulating the sadhus who take them as pupils and promise them the wonders of Heaven. According to deputies, 26-year-old Justin Alexander Carter was last seen in the early hours of September 27 - around 4 a.m. - on River Watch Drive in Greenville County. Did Justin lay down a gorge somewhere along the trail? The path to Mantalai Lake, high in the Parvati Valley, follows the Parvati River to its glacial source. i just felt the need to google justin, and found your blog. Naïf people, desperate people, lost people. Justin Alexander is missing while traveling between Mantalai Lake and Kheerganga. Justin’s mother is not aware of any friends or family that Justin would go see other than … “When Justin got lost, there was so much effort to find him,” says Negi, adding that the police had never before used a helicopter to search for a missing foreigner. His large green backpack, containing most of his belongings, was collected at Om Shanti Guest House in Kalga, where he’d stored it before his trip with the sadhu. He kept looking for the next experience, the next trip, the one that would allow him to learn, to grow, to understand, and, ultimately, to be Who he was, to feel free, not just physically, but spiritually. The Parvati runs fast near its source, especially here, where the valley forces it together into a narrow pinch, and especially in summer. The last photo of Justin shows him looking tense and unwell and not his usual smiling self. After the flute was found, Tom McElroy flew to India to see if his experience in tracking could uncover clues. Four days earlier, Alexander had blogged about his plan to meditate, practice yoga, and learn from the sadhu during this journey. He hoped (maybe against all odds) that it would turn out just fine. In 2002 a Baba was arrested, accused of Italian traveler Alessandra Verdi’s death. We hear from our audience every day about how much they love our long-form journalism. The baba is/was suspected to have knowledge on the fate of Justin. When confronted by Mittal’s team, she was adamant that she was an apsara, a female mythological spirit who tempts yogis and priests to test their resolve. Instead, many referred to him as a “business baba.” (Baba is often a colloquial word for sadhu.) Regardless of the body count. “I was fighting for my son’s life,” Reeb says. Alexander didn’t have a stove or cooking fuel, so Gapon pressed something into his hand, a fitting parting gift to someone who valued both practicality and minimalism: a red windproof butane lighter. If I get into trouble or begin to starve, I can hike down to a village and get help or eat. Later, the hero returns as a newly made “master of two worlds,” spiritual and material. Each summer, monsoon rains return to the Parvati Valley, turning the hills lush and the river turbulent. It’s all over his last post. During the frantic October search, Alexander’s other belongings were found scattered around the Parvati Valley. I want to see the world through his eyes, which are essentially 5,000 years old, an ancient spiritual path. i didnt know we were gonna cry wolf for the last time.. or maybe i did.. The one where he describes the man who enticed him to tag along. The Baba ended up being arrested by the local police. In her eyes, Rawat at best knew more than he was saying and at worst might have taken her son’s life. He has not been seen since September 3rd, when he was photographed with some hikers while returning from his trek. 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