June 24, 2016 8:37 am
Yesterday, Paul Ruben, Felix and Ben arrived safely in the Netherlands. Paul and Ruben stayed in Nepal for around three weeks. Felix and Ben around two. Paul’s focus was on searching between base-camp and Italia camp. The other men focused more on the villages surrounding Dhaulagiri and the guiding of and agreements with the local authorities. Pieter, Sander, Michel and Herman Peter are still in Nepal. In the mountains, active searching is currently not possible due to the bad weather but still continues in the surrounding villages.
Left to right: Felix, Ben, Ruben and Paul
June 21, 2016 10:15 pm
Message from Pieter: “Today was a day of mostly having to wait. In the morning, waiting for the helicopter, for good weather, and on that we were out of luck. We did some looking around in Beni. After that, we went to meet Paul for a distraction. We had a nice hike, experienced what it is like to hike in this area.
Fortunately, we met up with Paul and we drank a glass of coke together. And after that, we went on in two cars, back to the hotel. At the hotel, we joined SARdogs, the army and Paul to look at the map together. We got feedback from SARdogs. There were unfortunately unable to find anything. We can never exclude the possibility that the confused man was Christiaan. But we have not found any real evidence to go on with a further search. SARdogs really went all the way, into the bush, by foot, where cars cannot go, looking for clues on whether or not Christiaan was walking around there. But they could not find anything, and as far as we can tell, they were thorough. Tomorrow will be a very exciting day, as the army helicopter has been standing at the ready for a couple of days now. But the army’s kindness is coming to an end. If the weather does not clear up tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon, the major will unfortunately be unable to fly a helicopter with his troops. We hope and pray that the weather will be good tomorrow. If it is during the morning, Paul can fly along for a while to point things out.”
June 21, 2016 7:40 am
On a day without a lot of news (the army still can’t fly), it is nice to be together with friends.
Pieter, Michel and Sander arrived in Beni. Felix, Ben and Ruben are there as well. Paul is coming back from his mountain hike and will arrive in Beni today.
We can see our surroundings with our own eyes. Contact with the army and Saron is possible by speaking directly with the army command and Saron command. This all helps in our plans to be together physically as well.
Pieter and major Karki, command mountain team
June 20, 2016 9:46 pm
The last few days we have heard rumours from various local people about a confused man who appears to look like Christiaan. Obviously we immediately carried out an extensive investigation. Further analysis proved that it appeared to concern two different persons and it also didn’t give us useful information to look further into.
It might be good to realize that westerners tend to “get confused a little” in a country such as Nepal. Moreover, just like we think that all Nepalese people look alike, they think the same about us westerners.
Since we want to investigate every single option and we can’t fully exclude the possibility that one of the confused men is Christiaan, we asked a team of sardogs to further investigate this matter. On their Facebook page they give updates on their search. Questioning the locals requires a specific approach. The Sardogs write that:
“They will walk along the way again and ask in every village for witnesses, if they have seen a person like Christiaan. In past days, some said they had seen a tourist like him, but we have to verify this. It is always better if a Nepali asks these questions than a foreigner. On the countryside, many people don´t speak English, especially the women. On other hand, Nepali sometimes feel uncomfortable to give negative answers to guests. Others may give wrong answers because they wish to get the reward. That´s why better our team will ask them at eye level.”
June 20, 2016 2:21 pm
At this moment, Ruben is with the special Nepalese army unit and was unfortunately unable to fly this morning due to bad weather. They decided to head for a lower area in which it was easier for the helicopter to pick them up. Unfortunately, the helicopter was unable to fly at all today. The photo above demonstrates well that it was, mildly put, somewhat of a challenge to reach the other area near Beni.
If you are praying for the search, could you please pray specifically for (temporary) better weather, so that the men of the army are at least able to reach the location and actually start the search?
