Awhile ago, HE published several articles by my friend Justin Alexander. One of his favorite books growing up was Joseph Campbell’s 1949 classic, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which the author presents an archetypal “hero’s journey.” The first step is a feeling or call to adventure, Campbell writes. Justin Alexander Shetler. Later, the hero returns as a newly made “master of two worlds,” spiritual and material. With him was Brijeshwar Kunwar, an engineer from Bangalore who was on holiday climbing a nearby mountain and had offered his skills to help. His large green backpack, containing most of his belongings, was collected at Om Shanti Guest House in Kalga, where he’d stored it before his trip with the sadhu. “On the path of a spiritual quest, a person questions all of their ingrained values,” Mittal says. Now he knew that might never happen. Justin Alexander Shetler disappeared somewhere in the Parvati Valley in 2016. Alongside, bodies are burned at designated ghats, concrete steps that fringe the river, where fires consume flesh in round-the-clock cremations. Alexander got his GED and then held jobs as a wilderness EMT and a massage therapist. But beneath Alexander’s glamorous tales was a person searching for higher meaning, sometimes at the expense of sensibility. "I've heard stories about the magical powers of these Babas," Justin Alexander posted on Instagram about Sat Narayan Rawat, the sadhu. In the first post on his travel blog, Adventures of Justin, he wrote: “I am running from a life that isn’t authentic…I’m running away from monotony and towards novelty; towards wonder, awe, and the things that make me feel vibrantly alive.” He spent the next two-and-a half years on the road, backpacking through South America and Asia, and driving his motorcycle around the United States. Still, desire for a life-changing experience overwhelmed fear. I stand for love, marriage, everything we’re missing and everything we desperately want back. We hear from our audience every day about how much they love our long-form journalism. The police effectively closed the case of Justin Alexander—just one more disappearance in the Parvati Valley. To inspire active participation in the world outside through award-winning coverage of the sports, people, places, adventure, discoveries, health and fitness, gear and apparel, trends and events that make up an active lifestyle. In December 2013, at age 32, Alexander announced his retirement. To many who lived in the area, Rawat was not an authentic sadhu. And his path appeared to be one not of disassociation but of action, as if he were the protagonist in his own epic novel. A bamboo flute-staff was stuck upright in the ground just up from the milky waters. He was surprised to find Rawat sitting in his hut. When Lee and several other friends confronted him, the sadhu became angry, saying, “Justin is crazy.” Rawat claimed the American had left him after they met some trekkers near Mantalai Lake and that Alexander headed higher up the valley with them. He wrote that he was “feeling the need for some alone time with mother Himalaya.” When he arrived in the valley, he messaged Christofer Lee, a French traveler Alexander had connected with online a year earlier. Find more newsletters on our. In her eyes, Rawat at best knew more than he was saying and at worst might have taken her son’s life. The milky blue waters, named after a benevolent Hindu goddess of fertility and devotion, seem inviting but can be a powerful, violent force. Among the vanished are people from Canada, Israel, Japan, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia. “You couldn’t help but think that he was going to wander around the corner, all skinny and emaciated, and say, ‘Tom! featured missing adults If you think you know the whereabouts of any person, BEFORE TAKING ANY ACTION, please contact the law enforcement agency listed in the record, or the California Department of Justice using the toll-free hotline: 1-800-222-FIND (1 … Many visitors come to venerate Shiva, husband of Parvati and one of the most exalted and popular gods in the Hindu pantheon. He left with a local holy man on or about the 24th of August, leaving most of his belongings in Kasol. A Nepali man, arrested by Kullu police in connection with the disappearance of US national Justin Alexander Shetler in the Parvati Valley, allegedly committed suicide on Saturday. Looking for something else? Justin Alexander Flores Samaro, is a Missing Person / Runaway Juvenile who was last seen in the 1300 blk of Major Hill Rd., Snow Camp, N.C., at 9:45 a.m., Friday September 4, 2020. Many see the Parvati Valley as a stage or even the culmination of their quest for enlightenment. He appears calm and stoic. Reeb stops short of revealing some of the things “that were on his mind and heart” but says her son was searching for a deeper meaning behind all his years on the road, and what lay ahead. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google, Thanks for signing up! In his hand he clutched his flute-staff. WHAT WE KNOW: Justin Alexander Shetler is missing… The waters that course from source to valley mouth are perpetually vicious, but when fed by monsoon rains and melting snow, the river morphs into a torrential beast. The path to Mantalai Lake, high in the Parvati Valley, follows the Parvati River to its glacial source. “For India speaks to the unconscious: it provokes it, makes it boil and sometimes overflow. “P.s. It’s possible Alexander found what he was looking for: a dreamlike revelation while sitting near the source of a holy river, listening to the minute motions of nature, that showed him the way forward. Recently he was on a bike trip around india on a royal enfield motorcycle. There, Alexander met a dreadlocked foreigner who played a bamboo flute and said, in a thick German accent, that he had been living in India for the past 20 years—“a simple life, with few possessions,” Alexander wrote online in admiration. (Photo: Courtesy of Andrey Gapon), On July 28, Andrey Gapon met Alexander in Khir Ganga, a ramshackle camp of wooden pole, tarpaulin, and corrugated aluminum structures that many Parvati Valley visitors see as the end point of their informal pilgrimage. “I mean, he ended up in a cave in India.”. “When Justin got lost, there was so much effort to find him,” says Negi, adding that the police had never before used a helicopter to search for a missing foreigner. The valley, where gods are said to have meditated for 3,000 years, is particularly alluring to the spiritually curious. “Eventually he pushed the limits a little too far.”. He also worked at an alternative school in Palo Alto, California, while fronting a Bay Area–based band called Punchface, which toured as far as Japan. Now is the time to join us. No one expected the quest to end in a search for his body. He arrived in the city of Varanasi, one of the country’s strongest spiritual magnets, where Hindu pilgrims bathe in the holy Ganges River to have their sins washed away. Rather than reporting the American missing to the police, the porter and the sadhu descended to Khir Ganga and said nothing. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! He once said that his life was about “walking that razor’s edge” between living in modern society and a free existence. Skeels and Kunwar scrambled down the scree and slippery rock to the riverbank. When Rawat joined the porter at an old forest service hut, Alexander hadn’t arrived. (Photo: @adventuresofjustin/Instagram). US national Justin Alexander Shetler had gone missing in the Parvati Valley in September. Staring down at some of Alexander’s unmistakable belongings—just 11 miles from where hundreds of backpackers gathered and reveled in tents at Khir Ganga—was a crushing moment. Many gravitated to his stories of climbing the Brooklyn Bridge at night, partaking in a shamanistic ritual in Brazil, undertaking a monk’s initiation ceremony in Thailand, and helping build a school in earthquake-wracked Nepal in the spring of 2016. On October 15, two days after Reeb had filed an official missing person’s report at the district police office in the city of Kullu, near the mouth of the Parvati Vally, Rawat was apprehended and brought before her and Skeels. In the September 3 photograph taken by the hikers, Alexander is wrapped in his gray shawl. Or maybe at the end of the trail, he found nothing; that the harder he tried, the more it felt like he was grasping at mist—chasing tendrils higher and higher into the mountains. “Over the next two weeks we became friends,” Alexander wrote on his blog. It had been a month since he was supposed to have returned. Nearby, they also found a black waterproof backpack cover, a gray scarf, and a red butane lighter. After the flute was found, Tom McElroy flew to India to see if his experience in tracking could uncover clues. “He left his backpack, passport, everything—and just ran away.” Some become so infatuated with India that they find a quiet niche or anonymity among the throng and never return home. As Harley Rustad reports at Outside, it’s also known for a plethora of missing and (presumably murdered) Western adventure tourists. Police won’t arrest them; even for murder, which happens I’m told.” Alexander felt a growing fascination with what sadhus represented and how they lived their lives—solitary and untethered—and he had come to trust Rawat. “He says most babas are fake, that they enjoy money, women, and posing for tourist photos for cash; basically fake-holy-man bums. Four days earlier, Alexander had blogged about his plan to meditate, practice yoga, and learn from the sadhu during this journey. He then walks barefoot through a meadow, drinks from a mountain stream, and lights a fire in his cave before lying down. Explore. Skeels and McElroy thought it was a strange coincidence the sadhu had supposedly killed himself days before his remand was set to expire, in a valley where the police make an effort to avoid drawing attention to the mysterious disappearances of tourists in their jurisdiction. OAK GROVE, Ky. (CLARKSVILLENOW) – Kentucky State Police announced Tuesday night they have arrested three people in the “disappearance and believed death” of Justin Tyler Sawyer, who was reported missing in Clarksville on Dec. 17. Over the past 25 years, according to both official and unofficial reports, at least two dozen foreign tourists have died or disappeared in and around the Parvati Valley. The day after he drove into the Parvati Valley, he posted on Facebook his plan to hike into the upper valley and live for weeks in a cave, emulating the lifestyle of the sadhus. Andrey Gapon, a 47-year-old Russian man, had spent three months on a self-made spiritual retreat in the Parvati Valley, deep in the Indian Himalayas. With conditions ripe for vanishing without trace, a question arises: Did all of these travelers get lost or murdered in the wild, or did some not want to be found? However Alexander’s journey ended, something happened at Mantalai Lake. Everything I own fits in one bag. Alexander established a reputation for being fearless. Most of the trail from the lake is a gradual traverse across moraine and alpine meadow, but there is one section, as the trail approaches the tree line, where it fringes a cliff edge above the river. (Photo: Courtesy of Andrey Gapon). In the September 3 photograph taken by the hikers, Alexander is wrapped in his gray shawl. Since 1998, more than 20 foreigners have gone missing from the hills, and most disappearances remain unsolved. “We have so many instances of that, people falling in the river.” But after finding out that Alexander had spent so much time with a sadhu, had lived in a cave, and carried a flute-staff, the police included his “don’t look for me” post in their official report as important context for his disappearance—that he could have been yet another foreign backpacker with a case of India syndrome who had dropped off the grid on purpose. Meanwhile, Lee and a group of Indian trekking guides familiar with the area searched around Khir Ganga on foot. 11.1k Followers, 553 Following, 439 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Justin Alexander (@adventuresofjustin) Justin Alexander (left) and Andrey Gapon in the Parvati Valley, just prior to the American traveler departing for Mantalai Lake. Looking down the rock slope, he noticed what might have been an impact site near the riverbank, suggesting a fall. I won’t die.” Alexander wasn’t after complete solitude, but he wanted the space to quietly meditate and actively test his mettle while living in a cave with few supplies. Just weeks before, Gapon had also trekked to Mantalai, a cluster of pools murky with glacial flour at the source of the Parvati River. Two men said goodbye with a godlike river thundering in their ears. The Curious Case of Justin Alexander: Adventure Tourist or Murder Victim? On a marriage certificate obtained by FOX 10's Justin Lum, it was stated that Cox changed his name from "Alexander Lamar Cox" to "Alexander Lamar Pastenes" following the marriage. Justin’s mother is not aware of any friends or family that Justin would go see other than possibly his brother, but has not been seen there. “I’ve been living in some caves in the Indian Himalayas for the last couple weeks,” Alexander posted online on August 13. Justin was last seen by hikers while returning from the pilgrimage. “The only time I’ve been freaked out and anxious was when he was in India,” she remembers. Police won't arrest them; even for murder, which happens I'm told.". They come to sit where the Buddha achieved enlightenment under a bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya; they come to wander Rishikesh, where the Beatles spent weeks in an ashram in 1968 penning songs; and they come for the Maha Kumbh Mela, believed to be the largest religious gathering on the planet, where in 2013 an estimated 30 million people congregated in a single day. “It’s very easy to have accidents in that area, no matter how conscious you are.”. I’m going to put my heart into it and see what happens... Maybe Baba Life will be good for me.” In his gray daypack, Alexander packed a kilogram of rice, some oats, nuts, raisins, tea, sugar, and flour. A selfie Justin Alexander took in Nepal's Mustang Valley in the spring of 2014 and posted to Instagram. Discovery-owned Travel Channel is gearing up to launch Lost in the Wild, which will journey into the wilderness to track down answers to puzzling missing persons cases.. The Parvati River thundered below. Others were drawn to what his adventures represented: Alexander was minimalist but not rejectionist. "I've been living in some caves in the Indian Himalayas for the last couple weeks," Justin Alexander posted on Instagram, including this photo of the inside of his cave. She boarded a plane to New Delhi on October 9, connecting with a friend of Alexander’s, Jonathan Skeels, en route in London. The pair leapfrogged along the left riverbank, scanning the boulder-strewn turns and grassy slopes for anything out of the ordinary. But Alexander was also adept in the more contemplative forms of awareness, including Brown’s practice of returning to a single square foot in the wild, a “sit spot,” to listen and notice slight changes in the environment. Those he’d met in the Parvati Valley were also growing worried. After two hours, the police flew back to Kullu, leaving Skeels to continue on foot downstream to Khir Ganga. Missing trekkers have cast a shadow on Himachal Pradesh's booming tourism business. Landscape view near the river between Manali to Leh Ladakh in India. He never retrieved his motorcycle. Few countries on earth draw spiritual tourists in such zealous droves as India. Subscribe to our newsletters to stay up-to-date on the latest outdoor news. Sitting six feet from one of the last people to see Alexander alive, Reeb struggled to keep her composure. In December 2013, at age 32, Alexander announced his retirement. Justin Alexander Shetler is missing. But this time was different. It was likely the first foreigner he’d met who had been living in the country long-term. Justin Alexander Shetler is missing. It is a phenomenon known as India syndrome, not a clinical diagnosis but a spectrum of behavioral changes that range from the benign (disorientation and anxiety) to the extreme (a total detachment from reality). “I’ve heard stories about the magical powers of these Babas,” he wrote on Instagram on August 15. When a quest has been chosen, a teacher leads the hero-to-be through a series of tests to a stage of metamorphosis, and then to the apotheosis of the journey: a great realization. Through their investigation, the police who oversee the Parvati Valley favored explanations that didn’t point to another murder of a foreigner in their district. Oct 14, 2016 - To all of you who have been concerned with what may be happening to Justin, this is a message… Suzie Reeb needs your support for FIND JUSTIN ALEXANDER SHETLER. Every dollar you contribute goes to writers and publishers who spend hours, weeks, and months reporting and writing outstanding stories. Alexander epitomized this. It sent a chill down my spine when I heard my cabbie talk about so many travellers (mostly solo trekkers from Europe and the US) who go missing and are not found, even after years. After receiving a message from a concerned mutual friend, Gapon, who had returned to Russia earlier in the month, messaged Lee, who was still in Kalga. I think Justin was seen by some hikers after he left the baba. Did Alexander slip and tumble into the river? Alexander was confident about his journey, but something was weighing on him as well. In the rest of the country, hotel and guesthouse owners are required by law to log their patrons into an online database, but in the Parvati, the vast majority travel in and out without record. Become a Longreads Member for just $3 per month. He went on to teach at a children’s camp associated with the school. In her eyes, Rawat at best knew more than he was saying and at worst might have taken her son’s life. When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small commission. CR seemed to be suspicious of the baba. The space was cramped, but Gapon remembers Alexander was keeping it “forest clean.” He had collected wood to keep his pit fire rolling each night and had candles to read by in the evenings. (Photo: @adventuresofjustin/Instagram). His mother, on the other side of the world in Portland, Oregon, started to become concerned. But the glitz of the job didn’t impress Alexander for long. As Harley Rustad reports at Outside, it’s also known for a plethora of missing and (presumably murdered) Western adventure tourists. Wherever her son traveled, Suzie Reeb rarely felt nervous. The isolation and lack of regulation only add to the draw. Create your own site at WordPress.com arrow-right. At around 4 p.m., Kunwar reached the cliff-edge section of trail above a 100-plus-foot, near-vertical rock slide down to boulders and churning waters. The Parvati Valley in the Indian Himalaya — known for its overwhelming beauty — calls to those who want to shed their possessions as part of a quest for spiritual enlightenment. Above the drawing, scribbled in black pen, Alexander had written, “Happiness comes from the freedom and capability to dream a life into reality.”. In India, he and Reeb met with U.S. embassy officials in the capital before traveling north into the mountains. Some arrive with an emotional or psychological issue in their life and succumb to a heady mix of culture shock, overwhelming unfamiliarity, alluring exoticism, and, in most cases, drugs. He was looking for liberation. Tourists return as well, despite the valley’s dark history. “Maybe he was a great person, but there was something that was very hard and very aggressive with this spirit.” He warned Alexander to be careful. She knew he would’ve called at the soonest opportunity. His name is Greek, meaning "protector of men". In the first post on his travel blog, Adventures of Justin, he wrote: “I am running from a life that isn’t authentic…I’m running away from monotony and towards novelty; towards wonder, awe, and the things that make me feel vibrantly alive.” He spent the next two-and-a half years on the road, backpacking through South America and Asia, and driving his motorcycle around the United States. Recently he was on a bike trip around india on a royal enfield motorcycle. For some who met Alexander in the Parvati Valley, while it seemed unlikely, it also didn’t seem far-fetched that he might have voluntarily disappeared. Please support Outside Online today. The long list of those adventurous travelers who go missing while exploring off the beaten track places. Others might have been targeted after being caught up in the lucrative drug trade, buying hash at the source and selling it to tourists. He felt compelled to help search. According to deputies, 26-year-old Justin Alexander Carter was last seen in the early hours of September 27 - around 4 a.m. - on River Watch Drive in Greenville County. The Frenchman hiked three hours to Khir Ganga to find the one person he knew was with Alexander last. Was he pushed? Rawat had a reputation in Khir Ganga for petty theft from negligent tourists, and Lee never had a good feeling about the sadhu. “I think he came to a point where he realized that just being able to survive in tough conditions is not enough to really be free,” Gapon says. Now Alexander was embarking on a three-day trek to a holy site called Mantalai Lake, where he would camp under the stars with few supplies. Midway through the trip, on July 22, he entered the Parvati Valley. Most simply vanished without a trace in this one sliver of the subcontinent. Now he killed himself while in custody so really no conclusions can be drawn, but the whole thing is shady as fuck. “It’s like a bomb,” Mittal says. It brings forth the buried, from the deep layers of our psyche.”. But the country has a way of taking hold of the spiritually curious and turning innocent idealism into devoted fervor. 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