A 47-year-old Bulgarian national was killed while paragliding near the Rising Star peak above Khanyara in Himachal Pradesh’s Kangra district, officials said on Monday. The solo flyer, identified as Maksim Valentinovich Gavrilichenko, had taken off from Bir-Billing and crash-landed at around 3.30 pm on Sunday, following which a rescue and recovery operation was launched at around 9 pm. He had arrived in India on a tourist visa on October 7.
The two solo flyers, Sebastian from Austria and Adam Bisztyga from Poland, crash-landed at two different locations in the mountain range last week after taking off from Billing. Bisztyga was rescued from the range above Palampur While Sebastian was rescued from above Kareri Lake. The incident follows another reoperation in which two foreign paragliders were rescued on Sunday after remaining stranded in the Dhauladhar mountain range following crash landings.
The rescue operation continued overnight, and his body was recovered on Monday morning by the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), with assistance from HIM-SAMSARA, a search and rescue association. Gavrilichenko was paragliding with his friend Stephen Antony Purdie, 63, a British national, when the accident occurred. The body was taken to the mortuary of the zonal hospital in Dharamshala, where a post-mortem examination was conducted.
