The snow is deep, visibility is poor, and somewhere beneath the white expanse could be a soldier buried for hours.
A rescue team moves carefully through the mountains, carrying probes, shovels, beacons and specialised equipment. Every step is deliberate, every minute matters. At high altitude, even reaching the site can be a mission.
When a distress call comes, the team has just five minutes to mobilise.
This is the world of Tiranga Mountain Rescue (TMR), India’s first professional mountain and avalanche rescue organisation. For the past decade, its teams have worked across some of the country’s harshest terrain, often alongside the Indian Army and disaster response agencies.
Since its founding in 2016, TMR has deployed 16 specialised teams across avalanche-prone regions from Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh. Comprising expert mountaineers, former High Altitude Warfare School instructors, ex-servicemen and civilian rescue professionals, they provide round-the-clock support in extreme weather and high-altitude conditions.
TMR rescuers train for high-altitude missions where steep terrain, heavy snowfall and limited visibility can make every minute count.
So far, TMR’s work has helped save approximately 400 soldiers. But the roots of that mission lie in a rescue of a very different kind — one that began when its founder, Hemant Sachdev, found himself stranded on a mountain and in need of help.
A fall on Everest changed everything
Hemant Sachdev had always been drawn to the outdoors.
Long before becoming an entrepreneur, he was a climber and hiker. He spent his younger years exploring mountains and went on several expeditions across the Himalayas.
In 2013, he was climbing Everest with three friends. Unlike the large teams that typically attempt the mountain, theirs was a small group.
While crossing the infamous Khumbu Icefall, Hemant encountered a moment that could easily have ended differently.
He was crossing a difficult section over a large crevasse, using two ropes for balance. Suddenly, the rope he was holding snapped.
Equipped with beacons, probes and specialised rescue gear, teams search through snow to locate those trapped beneath avalanches.
He fell, but fortunately, he was still secured to the second rope. He found himself dangling over the crevasse, wondering how long it would hold under his weight and backpack.
Then his friend, a professional rescuer, turned back, reached him and pulled him out. There was little time to process what had happened. On Everest, there is no luxury of stopping to think about what could have gone wrong; you steady yourself and keep moving.
Hemant did exactly that.
A week later, on 19 May, he stood on the summit with his friends. They had reached early, and for nearly half an hour, the four of them were alone at the top.
After two months of climbing, the stillness finally gave him a moment to reflect. His mind went back to the crevasse, the broken rope and the friend who had known exactly what to do when everything went wrong.
“If you don’t have a great structure or a good sense of very skilled people to provide you safety, to ensure your safety, then you can never really achieve great heights,” he recalls.
He did not know it then, but that thought would eventually take him beyond climbing mountains. Three years later, it would become the foundation for Tiranga Mountain Rescue.
The question that led to Tiranga Mountain Rescue
In January 2016, Hemant was in Delhi when news of a devastating avalanche in Siachen broke.
Ten soldiers had been buried for five days. When they were finally found, nine had died. One was barely alive and passed away two days later.
For Hemant, the tragedy raised a difficult question.
If an ordinary climber like him could be rescued from a dangerous crevasse on Everest, why couldn’t soldiers, who spent months in these extreme environments as part of their duty, receive the same specialised support?
“We do it out of passion. They do it out of duty, and are still left to face these circumstances” he says.
Over the past decade, TMR has trained more than 20,000 Army personnel in avalanche awareness, mountain survival and emergency response.
Soon after, Hemant met the Northern Army commander and explained how specialised mountain rescue systems worked in other parts of the world. He was asked to prepare a blueprint.
He did that but building such a system for India’s mountains meant working around difficult terrain, weather and institutional constraints. More importantly, it meant convincing an organisation that had traditionally shouldered rescue operations itself to work with a civilian specialist team.
Hemant decided to take on the challenge anyway.
“I’ll do this out of my gratitude, service, commitment to the country and to the soldiers,” he recalls.
TMR began as a trust and foundation with just three teams and 15 people.
Today, it has grown into a specialised rescue force with 16 teams. Its rescuers undergo annual training in Europe and are deployed for six months of the year across the Himalayas, visiting more than 200 posts annually.
At each post, the team assesses risks, studies the terrain and trains soldiers in avalanche awareness, mountain survival, search and rescue, terrain assessment and emergency response.
Over the past decade, TMR says it has trained more than 20,000 Army personnel.
In one 2022 mission near Tawang, TMR rescuers located seven missing soldiers within four hours after earlier searches had failed to find them.
The results have been striking. Avalanche-related casualties in the regions where it operates reportedly fell from 38 in 2017 to virtually zero in 2023–24.
The organisation has also formalised its work with the Army through MoUs across the Northern, Eastern and Central Commands, culminating in an agreement with Army Headquarters in September 2024.
Ten years of answering the call
For Pradhuman Singh, Tiranga Mountain Rescue has been a part of his life almost from the beginning.
He joined the organisation in 2016 and, over the past decade, has watched a small team grow into a specialised rescue force working across some of India’s toughest mountain terrain. Based in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district, where he runs Scape Edger Camp, Pradhuman has spent years preparing for one thing: the call that can come at any moment.
“We assess the day’s requirements — what the rescue information and the specific task are. We ensure we are fully prepared with the necessary equipment for every mission, as one can never predict what might happen; we always maintain a state of readiness.”
And when the message does arrive, there is little time to think.
TMR teams assess snow conditions and terrain before beginning a rescue, helping them navigate the risks of avalanche-prone regions.
“When we receive a message, we mobilise for the mission within five minutes,” he says.
That readiness is built long before a rescue begins. Whenever a new training session starts, TMR’s teams gather in Manali for three weeks of training at Rohtang Top, where the focus is heavily on endurance. New volunteers are assessed for their equipment-handling and technical skills, but for Pradhuman, surviving and working in the mountains demands something more, – endurance.
“Every rescue is challenging; there is no doubt about that; every single one is difficult. However, the most difficult task within a rescue operation is the evacuation,” he adds. After searching and detecting the victims (whether they had survived or not) and bringing them back.
Finding someone buried beneath snow is only the first step. The real challenge can often be getting them safely out through steep slopes, unstable snow and unforgiving terrain.
Over the years, technology has become an important part of that work. Along with standard equipment such as beacons, probes and shovels, TMR uses specialised tools like the RACO R9, which can detect people beneath snow through specialised chips, beacons, mobile phones and other electronic devices.
In 2019, during a rescue operation in Tangdhar, the team detected a mobile phone buried beneath four to five feet of snow. During snowfall, rescuers also conduct snow profiling to assess avalanche risks before deciding how an operation should proceed.
A five-minute mobilisation window means TMR teams must stay prepared to respond whenever a distress call comes from the mountains.
But equipment can only take a team so far. The rest comes down to training, experience and the ability to keep going when conditions become increasingly difficult.
For Pradhuman, that has meant spending 10 years learning to read the mountains — and being ready to enter them when others need help.
The rescues that test everything
In the mountains, speed can mean the difference between finding someone and losing them. But reaching a site can be a challenge in itself, with unpredictable weather, difficult terrain and limited visibility working against rescuers.
Some of TMR’s toughest missions show how much preparation and the ability to act quickly can matter.
In 2022, seven soldiers disappeared near Tawang after being buried in difficult crevasse-avalanche terrain. Army teams searched for nearly 48 to 50 hours but could not determine where they were.
A three-member TMR team was brought in from Sikkim.
Getting there was a mission in itself. The rescuers travelled through multiple helicopter transfers before reaching the site. By then, a much larger Army search operation was already underway. The TMR team began its own assessment of the terrain.
Within four hours, they found all seven soldiers.
Every rescue begins with a race against the clock as TMR teams mobilise within minutes of receiving a distress call.
Sadly, none had survived. But the team was able to locate, recover and bring them back — giving their families an answer and ensuring the soldiers could be brought home.
Another rescue in Kashmir came down to an even narrower window.
Three soldiers were buried in an avalanche late in the afternoon. By the time TMR’s two rescuers reached the site, the weather had worsened and darkness had set in.
Army teams had already searched for several hours without success and, with night falling, were preparing to call off the operation until morning.
The TMR rescuers chose to continue.
Within an hour, they found all three soldiers, and two of them were alive.
For Hemant, continuing the search that night may have made all the difference. He believes that had the operation been postponed until morning, all three may have died.
“These missions capture what has come to define TMR’s work over the past decade: moving quickly, working alongside the Army and continuing the search even when conditions appear impossible,” he says.
That expertise has also taken the organisation beyond avalanche rescues along India’s northern borders. TMR has contributed to major disaster-response operations including the Mount Trishul rescue mission and the Manipur Tupul landslide in 2022, the Sikkim glacial lake outburst floods in 2023, and the Wayanad floods and landslides in 2024.
Each emergency has brought different terrain, challenges and risks. But for Pradhuman, who has spent 10 years answering these calls, one thing remains unchanged: there is no such thing as a routine rescue in the mountains.
There is only the next call, the next climb and the possibility that someone, somewhere, is still waiting to be found.
A mountain rescue system for the future
For Hemant, the biggest achievement isn’t simply the number of lives saved. It is the possibility of building something India did not have before — a professional, civilian-led mountain rescue institution that complements the capabilities of the armed forces.
After a decade with TMR, he says the gratitude of being able to serve soldiers remains one of the feelings he carries most strongly. He also takes satisfaction in seeing the organisation deliver results despite being privately funded, a nonprofit and entirely pro bono in its work for the Army.
TMR has begun working with India’s disaster response ecosystem to build civilian mountain rescue infrastructure, too. Its larger goal for the next decade is ambitious: to expand and professionalise mountain rescue across the Himalayas.
The world’s largest mountain range is home to millions who live, travel and work across its difficult terrain, yet professional mountain rescue infrastructure remains limited.
From avalanche zones to landslides and floods, TMR is working towards building a stronger mountain rescue network across the Himalayas.
Hemant wants to change that. For him, the lesson from Everest was never simply about surviving a fall, but what becomes possible when people have the right skills, preparation and support behind them.
A decade after turning that realisation into Tiranga Mountain Rescue, the idea has grown from one climber’s moment of vulnerability into a rescue system standing alongside those who protect India’s frontiers.
Perhaps that is the most powerful lesson the mountains have offered him: sometimes, helping people reach greater heights begins with making sure someone is there to bring them home.
All images courtsey of Tiranga Mountain Rescue team
