Son treks into Bhutans snowy mountains in search of CM father

36-yr-old Tashi Khandu leads a team of 100 into Bhutans Yeti sanctuary.

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Even as over 10,000 people,including 3,000 Army personnel scour the treacherous terrain in search of the Pawan Hans chopper that went missing on Saturday morning with Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu onboard,his son Tashi Tsering Khandu has taken upon himself the task of marching into the eastern Himalayas to try his luck.

Tashi,36,is leading a team of 100 young men,mostly from Tawang,and is currently on a foot-march deep inside the Sakteng and Merak areas of eastern Bhutan,looking for his fathers chopper. Tashi is the second of four sons and two daughters of the Chief Minister.

Merak and Sakteng are part of the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary located at about 11,500 feet created as a preserve of the legendary Yeti,also known as the Migoi in the local Brokpa language.

While Merak lies along the Nyera Ama Chu River,Sakteng is along the Gamri Chu River. Accessible only by foot after a 45-minute drive from Tashigang to Rhadi,it takes two days walk to reach Merek and two more days to reach Sakteng. A tourist trek opened in October 2010 has marked Merek and Sakteng as a five to six-day walk from Rhadi and Tashigang but that is only for the adventure-lover.

Tashi went out on Sunday afternoon,first to Tashigang,about 70 km east of Tawang town,and then up into Merak and Sakteng,both difficult areas in terms of accessibility, Takam Sanjay,Lok Sabha member from Arunachal Pradesh,told The Indian Express today. Sanjay,incidentally,is chief of the Crisis Management Cell (CMC) constituted in the wake of the CMs chopper going missing,and is supervising operations from Dirang,the nearest civilian town to Sela Pass.

Merak and Sakteng fall in the area in eastern Bhutan thats been identified as a focus area for search operations on the basis of inputs provided by ISRO images and the Sukhoi aircraft that were specially flown in from Bareilly to scan the region on Sunday. The Bhutan government had allowed India to carry out the search inside its territory.

Merak and Sakteng are huge mountain ranges with thick vegetation as well as snow and trekking into its interior is indeed a challenging task. Though most of the boys accompanying Tashi are born mountain-climbers,what we are worried about is the little amount of ration that they are carrying. Mobile connectivity too is poor and I havent been able to speak to him today, Sanjay said from Dirang.

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Inside Arunachal Pradesh,over 3,000 soldiers,several hundred personnel of the state police,ITBP,SSB and Border Roads Organization and several thousand villagers are out across the three districts of Tawang,West Kameng and East Kameng. Today,however,the focus was more on Nagar GG (GG in Arunachal Pradesh official parlance denoting grazing ground for yaks),a mountain range west of Sela,and perched at a little over 13,000 feet from the sea level.

Hundreds of foot-soldiers comprising both security personnel and civilians are carrying out an extensive search in the Nagar GG area despite bad weather. This is a very special operation,with the government backing up the teams with food,medicine,GPRS,WLL phones and other items, V Narayanswamy,minister in the PMO,currently camping in Itanagar said today. With the weather continuing to remain bad,there was hardly any aerial search because the IAF choppers could not fly over the area.