A Singaporean teacher-in-training and amateur mountaineer reported missing in Cambodia last week was found alive and healthy at the foot of Kampong Speu’s Oral Mountain yesterday.
Sanjay Radakrishna, a 26-year-old adventure enthusiast, came to Cambodia on a solo trip to trek his way up the 1,813-metre peak, the Kingdom’s largest.
Radakrishna’s last contact with family and friends was on June 30, when he told his girlfriend that he had been prevented from climbing the mountain that day due to inclement weather.
“Sanjay going missing was quite a shock,” said Amin Ruslan, a friend and football teammate. “He’s quite an avid mountain climber, so this trip shouldn’t have been a problem; he’s been to the base camp of Mount Everest a few times.”
Ruslan added that his friend is always “going on his adventures” but also maintains regular contact and posts updates and pictures on his Facebook.
But this go-around, at least, Radakrishna appeared to be in search of a more unplugged experience. He was last spotted on July 1 with a guide at the base of Oral, and nobody had heard from him since.
While his friends and younger brother were frantically raising money to hire a private investigator, and the Singaporean Embassy in Phnom Penh was on high alert and organising a search and rescue team, local police stumbled across the mountain man exactly where he said he would be.
“We deployed our police at the feet of Oral Mountain and were ready to send some other officers to climb the mountain to find him, but we just found him at the foot of the mountain,” said Met Muth, Kampong Speu’s deputy police chief.
Radakrishna was immediately taken to the Singaporean Embassy and was unavailable to comment yesterday.
The Singaporean looked well and healthy, according to Muth, who was not able to confirm why the climber had lost contact with the outside world or whether he had successfully made it up the mountain.
