Indian-origin climber, Nepalese guide killed in Manaslu avalanche

Dhrubajyoti Guha, based near Frankfurt in Germany, graduated in mechanical engineering from Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur (now IIEST Shibpur), in 2002.

An Indian-origin climber and his Nepalese Sherpa guide were killed in an overnight avalanche at Camp 3 on Mount Manaslu (8,163m) after they continued towards the summit while six other climbers turned back amid worsening weather, expedition organisers said on Sunday.

Rescuers found Dhrubajyoti Guha and Fursemba Sherpa, both 47, buried inside their tent, taking the autumn season toll on the world’s eighth-highest peak to four.Guha, based near Frankfurt in Germany, graduated in mechanical engineering from Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur (now IIEST Shibpur), in 2002. He had worked with ABB, IBM, Pfizer and Nestlé and was an accomplished ultra-endurance trail runner with 32 UTMB World Series race finishes, including several over 100km.

Sherpa was an NMA-registered guide from Nepal’s Makalu region who had summited Everest nine times and also climbed Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Cho Oyu and Manaslu.Mohan Lamsal, managing director of expedition organiser Makalu Adventure, said conditions deteriorated as the group reached the higher camps. “Six other climbers who decided to retreat from Camp 2 are safe, but Guha and Sherpa decided to make an early summit attempt and headed for Camp III on Saturday evening,” Lamsal told TOI.

Contact with the two was lost overnight. “We were alerted around 11.30am on Sunday after they stopped responding. We immediately sent four Sherpa climbers to Camp III to look for them. They dug through the snow and found both inside their tent, buried beneath nearly seven feet of snow,” Lamsal said.Continuing snowfall and avalanche risk prevented the rescuers from bringing the bodies to base camp. “I asked the rescue team to descend to the lower camps because it was not safe to remain there.

We will try to bring the bodies down once the weather improves,” Lamsal said.Heavy snowfall began on Friday evening and continued through Sunday, with up to 60cm recorded at base camp, forcing hundreds of climbers to retreat or remain at lower camps. Some teams had begun ascending on Saturday in anticipation of a relatively favourable weather window from Monday, but meteorologists had warned of another spell of bad weather around Wednesday as a system developing over the Bay of Bengal was expected to affect the region.The deaths followed two earlier fatalities on Manaslu this autumn. Singaporean climber Lau Wee Seng, 50, died at around 6,000m while descending from Camp 2 on Sept 17, while Tashi Sherpa, 20, a Nepali high-altitude worker, was found dead inside a tent at base camp on Sept 5.Manaslu has drawn a record 480 foreign climbers this autumn, accompanied by more than 500 Nepali guides and support staff. The latest fatalities took the number of reported mountaineering deaths across the Himalayas and Karakoram this year to at least 24, making 2026 one of the deadliest for climbers in the region in recent years.