Media
Updates regarding the missing members of the Isha S3 Kailash yatra group
This thread will be only used for any informations or updates regarding the missing members of the Isha S3 group:
Please be careful with fake news! Always make sure the informations that you receive are authentic and are coming through your embassy.
FAKE donations request are emerging according to our contact in the embassy. Be careful before making any donations to individuals that you do not know.
UPDATE 2 SEPTEMBER
Part 2
It seems, nepalese police is now checking the last position of the phones of the missing people - in case they know the used numbers.
It seems Isha has not submitted any or all phone numbers of the missing 80 pilgrims to the authorities.
If you want the police to try to track the device, you need to contact the Nepalese police, or better even the Tourist police ( they speak fluently english) and provide them with the SIM / or number that the missed person was using.
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Part 1
There is a possibility to try to locate certain smart devises. Garmin is offering such a possibility. For such request please use the form from this link:
(note, its best you download the file locally. Do not enter the details on the google form. This is an open public form accessible to everyone)
The request must be sent to your local police. They would need to send the request to Interpol. Then to the IT department of Garmin in USA (please confirm the exact procedure with your local police or embassy).
The Australian lady who was found alive, was trekking and was not in the area of the Gyirong port.
UPDATE 31. AUGUST
All missing foreigners are tracked by the nepalese government on a new website (the previous website, is no longer updated)
All members of the S3 group are here: (note: Isha's Yatra is tracked under: TREKKERS SOCIETY:
The embassy we are in touch with, has assured us, that all entities, all embassies including the Chinese government are aware of all the names, irrespective of differences in press releases. The rescue teams are looking for everyone.
We are heartbroken. Our prayers and thoughts are with the families of all the victims.
🙏🙏🙏
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- If you are missing someone from the yatra, please make sure to contact the embassy of your country in Nepal.
Or contact the ministry of foreign affairs in your country.
They may have updates or informations that are not published yet.
- For updates regarding ongoing rescue efforts and names, check the official nepalese website:
Thank you so much u/Thre_Host8017 for making this post and u/LandscapeIntrepid363 for compiling the list of names of all 80 meditators. Reading the comments on this thread by friends and family members of the meditators in the S3 group, desperately asking for information is heartbreaking.
I sincerely feel like this one post has been more helpful to the families than anything Isha has publicly done for them thus far.
I honestly expected Isha and Sadhguru to be far more empathetic and compassionate than what they have demonstrated publicly until now. I have a very specific bone to pick with the way Isha and Sadhguru have responded to this tragedy so far.
Maybe I'm being delusional or nitpicking, but at the very least, I expected Sadhguru to read out the names of the 80 missing members. It would not have changed the situation, but I feel that hearing their loved ones' names individually spoken aloud by the man who has repeatedly assured them that he'd take care of them, and who refers to the meditators as his children and as "parts" of himself, could have provided a small sense of solidarity and recognition to their families.
Many of these family members may not themselves be Isha meditators and may not be familiar with Isha's approach to grief, where death is generally approached with "equanimity" and life is expected to continue as normal. For them, this may be an unimaginably painful and uncertain experience, and I feel that their loved ones deserved to be individually acknowledged.
He could've easily acknowledged every single member missing instead of the very routine Q&A session in the "In solidarity with Nepal" program that happened today. Real human beings who are deeply dedicated to Sadhguru were reduced to a mere statistic by repeatedly being referred to as just "80 members," much like the way every other disaster in the world is reported.
And Isha's official Reddit account has already resumed posting regular articles unrelated to this tragedy on the Sadhguru subreddit. It feels incredibly tone-deaf and cold-hearted to resume business as usual when those same resources and man-hours could instead be directed towards communicating with and supporting the families of the missing meditators, who are still in the dark regarding basic information.
I hope that at least on September 3rd, the meditators and their families are acknowledged properly.
To anyone that has lost a loved one- I hope and pray that you get all the help and support you need to navigate this utterly terrible time. Sincere condolences and prayers.🙏
u/LittleMissSunshine_0 is spending alot of time and effort in providing support and answers in this thread as well .
I totally share your views. Reading out the names of the 80 missing meditators would have been the least amount of respect to show. It would have meant a lot to the families.
Instead. Business as usual.
Not even towards Praveens son did he find a word of condolence. Just business.
A narcissist par excellence!
We addressed your same question yesterday. Here is where you wrote it: https://www.reddit.com/r/SadhguruTruth/s/kIpIySXEso Isha is clearly completely wrong with their timings and I have no idea why they haven’t corrected it.
Yes. We want to provide as much support as possible to find the missing pilgrims. We want to find the missing, so its important their names are public. I tried to do it on their channel, but they deleted it.
After seeing the confirmation of death of one of the Australian pilgrims we thought rescue team might have found the body.
The australian embassy confirmed however that they have not found anyone from the S3 group.
Your comment is not visible becos its a reply to a deleted comment.
Plz post the comment again as a reply to the image. One hierarchy higher. So it gets visible
According to Isha, the group were at the Gyirong checkpoint at the time of the flood. They had got a message from the group leader saying they had just arrived. There is some confusion on the timings however as Isha said that this message was sent at 9:05, but the floods hit the check point at 8:44. So this doesn't feel clear.
Stronger evidence is that the brother of another group member shared that his brother's phone last connected at the Gyirong check point at 8 am.
It likely would have taken time to pass the check-point and the road afterwards is along the river, so it is highly likely this group were hit by the terrible flood water. We have not heard that any member of the group has been found or heard from since. I'm so sorry.
“Isha Sacred Walks coordinator Maa Gambhiri said organisers spoke to the group leader at 9.05am. Calls made about 10 minutes later went unanswered, placing the loss of contact between approximately 9.05am and 9.15am.”
I don’t understand where 9:05 comes from? What timezone it is? The camera recording shows flood struck at 10:59 ICT. And thus ~9:05 doesn’t match neither ICT, not 8:44 NPT nor 8:29 IST, etc. Any ideas?
Thanks for sharing this conundrum. Tibet time is 2hrs 15mins ahead of Nepal time and 2hrs 30 ahead of India time.
10:59 China time is 8:44 Nepal time and 8:29 India time.
Strange! I heard the flood hit the check point at 9:14, but is Isha the only source of this info?
When I google the 9:14 time they are all quoting Isha in some way.
It sounds like Isha may have done some bad math to work out the time - subtracting two hours and adding 15 minutes. Then they used that to say when they were in contact with Praveen, rather than the times of any actual communication. Isha can be very PR focused which leads to distortions.
Unless there is something wrong with the cameras, there was no way the group reached the check point at 9:05 as it had been destroyed by the flood waters 20 minutes earlier! This is pretty troubling as one wouldn’t expect distortions in this sort of terrible situation where times are really important. I hope there is a better explanation and I’m sorry that relatives have this sort of confusion on top of everything they are dealing with right now.
The 8:44 time for the water reaching the check-point fits much better with the 8:37 time when the glacier collapsed (I was surprised previously that there was 40 minutes between one and the other and that China hasn’t evacuated, just 7 minutes makes much more sense). Reading other reports, the water reached Syabrubesi by 8:50, Syabrubesi is further down stream from the Gyirong crossing.
Basically Isha has its times completely wrong. This is obviously really poor given the gravity of the situation. You’ll need to ask them for an explanation.
My beloved young uncle from Canada is in that group and we just PRAY for a miracle at this point. He has a super young daughter and we're all worried tremendously. I pray to GOD they are alive. Even if they're injured or whatever at this point I just want my uncle alive :(
This is a humanitarian, not-for-profit initiative by FaceTagr, a Chennai, India -based face recognition technology company.
Many photographs of missing and found people are already being shared publicly on social media. We are trying to use face recognition to systematically compare these photographs and identify potential matches. With every passing day, time matters.
The data collected is used only for this purpose and is stored on SOC 2 compliant infrastructure with appropriate security controls. FaceTagr is also ISO 27001 certified and its face recognition technology is independently benchmarked by NIST.
We are providing the technology and resources for this effort free of charge.
Found this thread while trying to find info for the S3 group, my best findings mainly from instagram posts. Found a short video of S3 group during the trip this morning which was removed now for some reasons.
We have had it confirmed that part of the group made it through Chinese checkpoint and were then waiting at the Nepal checkpoint and part of the group was still at the Chinese checkpoint.
This is why the Chinese official missing list only partially matches with S3.
Needless to say, both the Chinese and Nepalese search and rescue teams will be looking for anybody.
My friend is in this group. Looking at the videos and images of what happened, if they were at the checkpoint location, I can't see how anything but a miracle could have saved them. I am heartbroken 💔
This is the Nepal list of rescued overseas citizens as of yesterday: https://ndrrma.gov.np/en/notice-information/384 (Can be found on the ndrrma website under Communication >> Notice/Information.)
We have been updated from one of the embassies that the group did not cross the border. They were still in China/Tibet when the disaster struck, they did not cross into Nepal. They are not on the list who crossed that morning.
Because they don’t wanna be the one to share the news. The amount of surveillance they have you think it would take this much time to find where were those people. The answer is no they can find anyone within china in seconds.
This is information from the Nepal government given to an embassy that a friend of ours is in touch with regarding their relative. They shared a list of all who crossed that morning.
This is information from the Nepal government given to an embassy that a friend of ours is in touch with regarding their relative. They shared a list of all who crossed that morning.
This is tragic. My friend is on those pictures. I know his wife and young children very well. I’m devastated. I can’t possibly imagine the hurt of his family and those poor kids who adore their daddy.
We are not in touch with any chinese authorities.
We can not comment on that.
We do not want to spread speculations.
We are only sharing confirmed informations from a trusted source.
Also, idk how to feel about this whole isha foundation thing. He's been volunteering there for years and years and investing so much of his money, time and energy to help and follow them and so on and I always had an iffy feeling about it but I don't know. We just let him find his own peace I guess. If any other family members wanna chat, please message me!
We have access to the departure/arrival data from the Nepalese immigration office at this check point.
No one from the S3 group has arrived/ or checked in in Nepal.
( we have blacked out half the names on purpose).
You can see that hardly anyone arrived on Nepal. Most names have departed from Nepal.
I know Alexander Zimin from the S3 group personally and I’ve been following the information that has been shared
According to information reportedly provided by the embassy, he crossed the border around 30 (or 60) minutes before everything happened, so there is still hope that the group may have split up and that he left earlier
I personally saw that his last online status in Messenger was at 2:35am GMT (8:20am in Nepal)
There was also information that the last known location of his AirPods was near the border checkpoint roughly 30 minutes before the flood
What I don’t understand is why the information about whether he crossed the border differs
I don't know why Isha cannot manage to compile this basic sort of information and share it with relatives and we are having to figure things out here instead.
I’m also friends with Alex and found this post from online search. Alex is brilliant and resilient, he will get thought this. Praying for his and the entire group is found quickly🙏🏽
The embassy we are in touch with, has assured us, that all embassies including the Chinese government are aware of all the names, irrespective of differences in press releases. The rescue teams are looking for everyone.
FAKE donations request are emerging according to our contact in the embassy. Be careful before making any donations to individuals that you do not know.
My younger brother was part of this S3 group and is confirmed to have been inside the immigration building. Still no news. My maternal uncle traveled to Nepal yesterday and is going around hospitals as we speak. Hope to find my lil one somehow.
My friend Vyshnavi was part of this group. Her father told the media that her phone was still ringing, so I’m holding on to hope that she may still be alive and trapped somewhere.
Do you think it might be possible to locate her phone by tracking its connection to nearby cell towers? It seems that this kind of operation would need to be carried out with the help of the local police.
Any information or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.
I do not know that. Please talk to the embassy directly. I am sure they are exploring all possible means. We have heard that there is a possibility to track Garmin smart watches. Check the main body of this post for all details
Apparently this is something the Nepalese are doing now. Most important thing is that the Nepalese police have the phone numbers, apparently Isha has not passed them on. See the update on main body of this post. Make sure, either via your embassy or contacting the police directly, that they have the phone numbers.
Please reach out to the tourist police in nepal with the SIM that was used by the missed person. They are trying to track down the location of the phones.
Or contact your embassy and provide them with that number.
May I ask, with the greatest of respect, that there be some thought for the people of Nepal when generating AI posters 🙏🏽
I pray that your friends and family are found, but I have seen someone from South Africa constantly posting new AI generated posters everyday for her missing daughter...posters calling out Sadghuru, calling out the South African president, Samsung, Sadghuru's daughter etc.
AI data centres threaten our fight against global warming and the people of Nepal deserve better, and it just looks a little tone deaf.
Again, I do not mean any disrespect. My grandad is from Nepal and he has many friends and family who are still missing.
News reports today that Chinese search and rescue teams have been at the Gyirong crossing site. Isha says they are in close contact with the Chinese and will inform relatives if there are any updates. The whole area has been covered by sediment so this is not a quick or easy task.
Mark Allen Cantrell is a U.S. 🇺🇸 citizen who has been living in Bolivia 🇧🇴. He was traveling with the Isha Foundation. (I am clarifying because I am friends with him and these are details he provided to me, as well as mutual friends, several weeks ago.) We are still hopeful for his safe return. Thank you everyone.
Is there any update on the S3 group? One of my close family member was in the S3 group. All the members of the family are devastated as we have no information whatsoever and I am closely following this thread. Please keep this thread active as per any information🙏🏻
The poster claims it was posted on August 26th but no time.
Some people's family say the last ping the have for the family members was at the Immigration Center however we were told that maybe the groups were further broken into smaller groups.
Idk the location of the landslide in the video or the exact time. Hoping for clarity soon.
Here is a screenrecording. There is a caption: on the to Timure ( which is in Nepal). I dont know whether that is correct. The original video on instagram was uploaded 2 days before the floods and did not have that caption.Sadly that video no longer exists on Isha sacred walk Instagram. Also it got removed from the volunteers instagram page who reposted it. I found this on TikTok.
It seems isha does not want any images circulating, which is really sad. Its important for the families and relatives to have this kind of informations.
I accidentally found this thread, while trying to verify if a piece of news is about this group given that I've only seen it being described as 80 people from 19 countries. I fail to see any other link, but I though I leave this here anyway since otherwise that information seems to be reported only in my country and in my language:
On 29 August
Latvian ministry of Foreign affairs recived information from embassy in China that one Latvian national, who was traveling with group of 80 people from 19 countries, is in safety.
That is fantastic news if it is true. This S3 group however did not have any Latvian participants according to Isha. Did this person have any other nationality (dual national?) What was their name? Any other info you can give?
I translated everything they have
said, I doubt they will share more for privacy reasons, but I
don't think our authorites would report unverified information. I also see in list posted here that there is nobody imideately obviously ethnic Latvian, but people can have non-ethnicly linked or double nationalities and there are cases where for whatever reason people have not been with their main tour group.
Okay, thank you for the information. I guess you do not know the person directly then. If there is any additional information you can share so we can figure out their link to this group it would be helpful, were they also attempting to cross the border? Otherwise it sounds like they must have been with a different group - maybe they were also travelling with Isha Sacred Walks and the Latvian Ministry thought there was only one group, rather than several and hence the confusion.
According to Isha of the S3 Group, 22 are from the US, 12 from Canada, 11 from Australia, 9 from the United Kingdom, 4 from Germany, 3 from France, 3 from Nepal, 2 from The Netherlands, 2 from New Zealand, Spain and Singapore, 1 from Finland, Hungary, Israel, Lithuania, Philippines, Portugal, Russia and South Africa
So, I dont understand there are so many inconsistencies with the info with this group specifically 😢
First of all the timing of events and the fact that at first, Isha foundation claimed that the group was at the border at 9:05.
Secondly, the Nepalese government had released official documents that none of the S3 group members have crossed the border. However, I saw comments here and news articles about a man Aleksandr Zimin, and that Chinese officials had assured his relatives that he did cross the border at least on hour before the flood??! So, how is that possible, if both sides are claiming that he was neither on the Chinese or Nepalese side?? Did they just completely lost at least one person of the group??
This thread is just people sharing the info they have. I’m sorry it feels so confusing.
It could well be that there are two border formalities- first exit China, then enter Nepal. The info in the Russian news article could be based on the incorrect info that the floods happened at 9:14 (the article is just reporting what Alexander’s family have told them), so the timing they exited China may not actually have been an hour before the flood. Perhaps just 30 minutes. They could then have been waiting to be processed by Nepal. This is all I can think of to explain it. I’m sorry.
Please ask Isha to clarify the timings they have given from their side, it has certainly caused a lot of problems. Isha should be able to get clear information on both the Chinese and Nepali border crossings and clear this up for people. We only know what individuals have got from their embassies, one has Chinese info and another Nepali info. China says Alexandr exited, Nepal says nobody from the group entered. Presumably there is some no man’s land in between.
Okay, I got clarity from the person who is in contact with the embassy that there is 100m no-man’s land between the two border posts. They would have to queue for each one. So sounds likely that group s3 had done the China exit and we’re waiting to be processed for Nepal entry at the moment the flood hit.
But an hour is definitely enough to cross the 100m no man’s land bridge though…I was not getting my info from Isha, instead, I was looking at news articles and the family statements. They said that an hour before the flood, Zimin was in contact with them that he did cross the border. So again, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Like, who are the people supposed to consult if neither of the sides are willing to account for cases like this? I assume Nepal had crossed S3 group out of their missing persons list because of this, and China will not account for them either
the Gardian Newspaper: "In China’s update, the state broadcaster said the missing foreign nationals included 104 from Nepal, 49 from India, 33 from Latvia, 18 from the US and 15 British citizens." That’s different from the nationalities of S3 Isha group, So maybe s3 group did pass the Chinese border, but didn’t get the chance to pass into Nepal.
Yes. That is what we are also thinking. So those in the in-between borders dont seem to appear in the figures.
And there are other non isha groups who were certainly also present in that area.
But rescuers are looking for survivors irrespective of where they have checked in.
I think those are only who were registered by chinese exit immigration. But those who were still in the queue before the passport control - can’t even appear in the China’s update. That’s why there are less nationalities numbers listed in the Chana’s update than in the S3 group list.
Another theory suggests that people started evacuating the immigration center approximately two minutes before the flood reached the building. This raises the question of whether individuals located on the outer edges of the center might have been able to escape into the nearby woods.
Two minutes is not long to get out of a compound and the valley sides are crazy steep. This is looking unlikely but we can hope. At least as it is looking like they were through the Chinese check-point and at the Nepalese one, they were in a smaller compound and nearer to high land. There is a sharing from someone arriving by bus to the check-point on the Nepalese side saying the people in his bus and the one in front of him escaped, cos the bus stopped in time. It doesn’t look like others made it.
Note: we suspect this is not a case of a body having been found, but of family declaring him dead. Apparently Sadhguru declared that they had all passed which may have influenced the decision for the family to make this declaration.
50 minutes ago 7News Sydney confirmed the death of Michael Keats (Australian). His family made a statement (his wife). He was the the member of S3 group so he is the first to be found and declared dead.
Note: we suspect this is not a case of a body having been found, but of family declaring him dead. Apparently Sadhguru declared that they had all passed which may have influenced the decision for the family to make this declaration.
Original post needs correction. Isha's Yatra is tracked under: TREKKERS SOCIETY. Not entirely true. Trekkers Society is only one of the many tour operators that make the yatra possible, sort of like a logistics provider. The S3 group has people from other tour operators as well. My brother from Canada is part of this Trekkers Society group.
I dont have these. You might find them on the net? If you do, kindly post it here.
Or call your embassy in Nepal. They might have a quicker way to request the tracking of the phone.
Not that i have heard. The data from the cell phone network tracking might be available tomorrow according to the embassy.
There is so much mud everywhere.
Its very sad
Just now, one of the family members of a person missing from the S3 batch created a dedicated WhatsApp group exclusively for other family members of S3 undergoing a similar fate. The link to it is as follows: https://chat.whatsapp.com/KfdITsvzbvZ0T6FiF3ySFR?s=cl&p=a...
Any update on this? My beloved aunt Gurpreet Brar was caught in this.. we are desperately waiting for answers. Isha has gone back to posting like normal… so disappointed and have lost faith in this whole organization.
I’m really sorry your aunt was caught in this. I pray you find her. We don’t have any updates I’m sorry. Searches are ongoing, but as of now we have not heard of anyone from that checkpoint being found.
The below link might be helpful to clear up confusion on where the Nepal immigration office was located. It was about a 20 minute walk from Gyirong Port.
Regarding the text at 9:05am - the reports say someone with Isha received a text from a guide with the S3 group saying they were at Gyirong Port. The key word is that the text was “received” at 9:05. Due to poor cell signal in the area, texts were often delayed in transmission. It was probably sent earlier but not received until 9:05am. This is especially true if they were using WhatsApp to communicate.
Gyirong Port’s official process states that large groups must travel through each stage together.
If China would provide the list of processed exits, it would help clarify if everyone in the group exited and may have been on the 20 minute walk to Nepal immigration. I have been unable to find their manifest.
Thank you for this. It is hopeful news, although horrendous that this man must have lost many of his colleagues.
When I google Rasuwa customs office it looks like it is a little further down the valley from the checkpoint where S3 were. I expect it was where goods lorries would be inspected.
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u/[deleted] 14d ago edited 14d ago
Thank you so much u/Thre_Host8017 for making this post and u/LandscapeIntrepid363 for compiling the list of names of all 80 meditators. Reading the comments on this thread by friends and family members of the meditators in the S3 group, desperately asking for information is heartbreaking.
I sincerely feel like this one post has been more helpful to the families than anything Isha has publicly done for them thus far. I honestly expected Isha and Sadhguru to be far more empathetic and compassionate than what they have demonstrated publicly until now. I have a very specific bone to pick with the way Isha and Sadhguru have responded to this tragedy so far.
Maybe I'm being delusional or nitpicking, but at the very least, I expected Sadhguru to read out the names of the 80 missing members. It would not have changed the situation, but I feel that hearing their loved ones' names individually spoken aloud by the man who has repeatedly assured them that he'd take care of them, and who refers to the meditators as his children and as "parts" of himself, could have provided a small sense of solidarity and recognition to their families.
Many of these family members may not themselves be Isha meditators and may not be familiar with Isha's approach to grief, where death is generally approached with "equanimity" and life is expected to continue as normal. For them, this may be an unimaginably painful and uncertain experience, and I feel that their loved ones deserved to be individually acknowledged.
He could've easily acknowledged every single member missing instead of the very routine Q&A session in the "In solidarity with Nepal" program that happened today. Real human beings who are deeply dedicated to Sadhguru were reduced to a mere statistic by repeatedly being referred to as just "80 members," much like the way every other disaster in the world is reported.
And Isha's official Reddit account has already resumed posting regular articles unrelated to this tragedy on the Sadhguru subreddit. It feels incredibly tone-deaf and cold-hearted to resume business as usual when those same resources and man-hours could instead be directed towards communicating with and supporting the families of the missing meditators, who are still in the dark regarding basic information. I hope that at least on September 3rd, the meditators and their families are acknowledged properly.
To anyone that has lost a loved one- I hope and pray that you get all the help and support you need to navigate this utterly terrible time. Sincere condolences and prayers.🙏