The Ministry of Culture, Tour­ism and Civil Aviation has awarded the Tenzing-Hil­lary prize to Captain Siddhartha Gurung, a high-attitude rescue pilot with Simrik Air. The award carries a cash prize of Rs 50,000. Gurung was honored for his courageous acts of rescuing stranded moun­taineers and saving their lives. Minster of Water Supply and San­itation, Bina Magar, herself a moun­taineer, handed a certificate of appreciation and the cash prize to Gurung on the occasion of the 11th International Mount Everest Day on May 29. The day marks the first suc­cessful ascent of Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgey Sherpa in 1953. Also awarded on the occasion was Kami Rita Sherpa, who has successfully scaled Everest 22 times, and Lhak­pa Sherpa, who has successfully ascended to the top of the high­est mountain nine times, a record among women mountaineers.

 

Gurung was involved in the rescue operation of two Taiwan­ese tourists who had gone miss­ing for more than 45 days in the Langtang region in the district of Rasuwa last year. While one of them was rescued alive, another was found dead.

 

Simrik Air was also involved in an international rescue operation earlier this month when a 45-year-old Bulgarian mountain­eer Boyan Petrov went missing for about 10 days while scaling Mt Sisapang in Tibet, the autonomous region of China.

 

Simrik Air, in recent years, has been carrying out high-altitude rescue operations for mountain­eers and trekkers who lose their way. It also transports patients from the remotest corners of the country. “We’re still in the devel­opment phase of rescue missions,” says Gurung, who has been flying since 1994. “At present, most of our competitors hire foreign per­sonnel for rescue missions, who are not available all through the year. We are training local people and working on making our rescue available throughout the year.” Gurung credits the Switzer­land-based Air Zermatt for begin­ning the high altitude air-rescue missions in Nepal in 2009 and for training Nepali manpower.

 

Besides Gurung, the compa­ny employs a number of rescue pilots, namely Surendra Paudel, Bibek Khadka and Ananda Tha­pa. Even in areas where landing a helicopter is hard, Simrik Air car­ries out a longline rescue, which involves the rescuer being attached to the bottom of a rope flown to the rescue site.