Kelly Thompson's chair at the family Christmas dinner will be vacant.
After scouring mountains and rivers in Nepal for his missing 27-year-old son, Gerald Thompson is flying home to Victoria, British Columbia.For nine days, the 52-year-old stockbroker followed the route his son trekked before a landslide tore apart the mountains in western Nepal last month.
Fifteen people died when the landslide, triggered by rain, hit the Bagarchhap area on Nov. 10. On the same day in eastern Nepal, an avalanche struck the Everest region, killing 61 people.
Together, they were the worst mountaineering disasters in this Himalayan kingdom the size of Florida.
During his search, Thompson met hundreds of villagers, fishermen and Buddhist monks. He showed them a poster of his son, with "MISSING" written in bold black letters.
"To each of them I asked, `Have you seen this boy?' " Thompson recounted in an interview in Katmandu, the capital.
The answer was no.
Thompson said he distributed hundreds of posters in Bagar-chhap, an area more than 7,000 feet high. Stone houses with flat roofs crowd the area. Pine, spruce, hemlock, maple and oak dot the landscape.
Bagarchhap is the first village where tourists stop on their trek. From there, one can occasionally see the snow-clad peaks of Mount Annapurna, the world's 10th-highest mountain.
The stunning beauty and the fine trekking routes attract thousands of Westerners every year.
The landslide at Bagarchhap killed six foreigners, including two Canadians. Three foreigners - Kelly, a Swiss woman and a Polish man - have not been found and were listed as missing.
Nepalese authorities have now found the right hand of a male Westerner in the area, but Thompson refused to talk about it.
"I came here with the hope that either he was washed away in the river and some people are taking care of him. Or he was saved somehow. Probably living in one of the monasteries," Thompson said.
"He is a tough little guy," Thompson said, "and a very experienced trekker" trained in wilderness first aid.
At the age of 19, he said, Kelly set off on an 18-month trip around the world. He later worked for four years in an orphanage in Guatemala.
Thompson said he first heard about the avalanche while on holiday in Hong Kong. Initial news reports did not mention the landslide, and he went back to Canada.
"At 6 p.m., two hours after I reached home, two city police arrived," Thompson recalled. "They had been contacted by Interpol that Kelly's passport had not been claimed and it was found in the Bagarchhap disaster area."
Thompson then called Kelly's girlfriend, and the two put together his route, he said.
On Dec. 7, Thompson headed for Katmandu with his daughter, Christy, his son's girlfriend and Robert Somogyi, a friend who is a trekking guide. Two other friends joined them from Bangkok.
"We decided that it is important to get to the site and also to meet villagers on the way," he said.
"When I saw the magnitude of the landslide, it became apparent that if Kelly survived, he survived, or if he was caught . . ." Thompson said.
The Hotel New Tibet where Kelly was staying was completely washed away, he said. "I had seen pictures, but it is another thing to stand next a 20-ton boulder and realize the magnitude," Thompson said.
"We asked fishermen if they had seen my son. I asked tea house owners if they have seen my son. I asked everyone, including monks," he said.
After three days, they felt they had done everything possible.
"With the help of the villagers and the monastery, we built a small stone memorial. I put in one of Kelly's photos inside it. . . . Here was my son, I told myself."
The headstone, fashioned out of a wooden plank, reads: "In loving memory of three Canadians - Kelly Thompson, Alan Sordi and Peter Wilson. And all the others who lost their lives in the Bagarchhap disaster Nov. 10, 1995."
"I was to pick Kelly up at Victoria airport a day before Christmas and go to meet his grand-mother and have turkey dinner," Thompson said, clutching Kelly's wallet - one of the few belongings of his son's that rescuers managed to retrieve.