The decades-long search for a man who vanished in the mountains of Pakistan has come to a bittersweet end after his body was discovered on a melting glacier nearly 28 years later.
Locals spotted the remains of 31-year-old Nasiruddin near the shrinking Lady Meadows glacier in the Kohistan region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on July 31. The body — astonishingly well-preserved, still in intact clothing and carrying his ID card — was found by a shepherd and buried the following day.
Nasiruddin’s nephew, Malik Ubaid, said the discovery has finally given the family a measure of peace. “Our family left no stone unturned to trace him over the years,” Ubaid told AFP. “Our uncles and cousins visited the glacier several times to see if his body could be retrieved, but they eventually gave up as it wasn’t possible. Finally, we have got some relief after the recovery of his dead body.”
According to relatives, Nasiruddin and his brother fled to the mountains after a village dispute in 1997. He fell into a crevasse during the journey and never returned. His brother survived. Nasiruddin was a husband and father of two.
Omar Khan, the local resident who discovered the body, told BBC Urdu, “The body was intact. The clothes were not even torn.”
Kohistan, where the tragedy took place, sits along the outer reaches of the Himalayas. Pakistan is home to more than 13,000 glaciers — the largest number outside the polar regions — but warming global temperatures are causing them to rapidly melt, sometimes revealing long-lost climbers, hikers, and mountaineers.
In recent years, melting glaciers have exposed the bodies of missing adventurers across the globe, from Everest to the Swiss Alps. Some had been missing for decades, their remains preserved in ice until the warming climate slowly gave them back.
The family can now give a proper farewell. R I P