‘Green Boots’: India plans daring mission to bring home soldier’s body from Everest’s death zone after 30 years

For thirty years, a lifeless figure clad in bright lime-coloured boots has lain undisturbed beneath a rocky overhang near the summit of the world’s tallest mountain. Climbers making their final push to the top of Everest have long passed this eerie waypoint, known simply as “Green Boots” — a grim but unavoidable marker on the route.

Indian authorities now believe they know exactly whose body it is, and they are moving to bring him home, BBC reported.

A Mission Three Decades In The Making

India is reportedly scouting for an elite high-altitude recovery team willing to take on one of mountaineering’s most hazardous assignments: retrieving the remains believed to belong to Dorje Morup, an Indian climber who perished during a 1996 expedition. His case is considered among the most well-known of the several hundred bodies still stranded on Everest’s slopes.

For his family, the mission represents a long-delayed chance at closure. Morup’s wife has described nights spent half-expecting a knock at the door, imagining her husband finally returning after all these years.

A Promise Made Before Departure

The evening before he set off, Morup — then 48 and serving as a lance naik with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the force responsible for guarding much of India’s frontier with China — sat with his wife at their home in Ladakh. He vowed he would return victorious and asked her to look after their children until he came back.

Morup was part of a six-member ITBP team attempting an ambitious feat: becoming the first Indian expedition to summit Everest via its more punishing Chinese, or northern, route, rather than the more commonly used Nepalese side.

Midway through the climb, a snowstorm forced three of the six team members to turn back. Morup pressed on with two teammates, Tsewang Smanla and Tsewang Paljor, and the trio eventually reached the 8,849-metre summit. Tragedy struck during their descent, when a blizzard overtook all three climbers.

Two of the bodies have never been located. The third — identified for years by his distinctive lime-coloured footwear — has remained at roughly 8,500 metres ever since.

Correcting A Case Of Mistaken Identity

For a long time, “Green Boots” was widely believed to be teammate Tsewang Paljor rather than Morup. However, accounts from surviving expedition members, combined with the location of the climbers’ final radio transmission, have since pointed authorities toward a different conclusion.

An unnamed ITBP official told BBC News Hindi that clothing and climbing equipment recovered in recent years helped confirm the body’s likely identity as Morup, adding that the force had never given up on bringing him home.

Why Recovery Is So Extraordinarily Dangerous

Retrieving bodies from Everest’s so-called “death zone” — where temperatures can drop to -40°C and oxygen is roughly a third of sea-level levels — remains exceptionally rare and dangerous, something that has only been attempted more frequently in the last decade.

Nepalese mountaineer Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa, who has taken part in similar missions, told BBC Hindi that weather and snow conditions would be decisive, and warned that the northern route lacks the rapid helicopter evacuation options available on the Nepalese side.

Mountaineering guide Pemba Ongchu Sherpa noted that such an operation could require as many as ten to twelve summit-capable climbers just to fix support ropes to the site, while Indian climber Kuntal Joisher told BBC Nepali that the initial descent — roughly the first 1,000 metres over steep, rocky terrain — would be the most perilous stretch.

Bodies frozen into contorted positions inside heavy climbing gear can weigh several times a living person’s weight, further complicating any descent, and remains risk decomposing once lowered to warmer altitudes. Industry experts estimate even routine recovery missions cost between $40,000 and $80,000 — well beyond what most families could afford on their own.

The ITBP, which is funding the operation, is aiming to bring Morup’s remains back to India by September and has been reaching out to Sherpa-led rescue teams for the job. Once repatriated, DNA testing will be used to formally confirm his identity before the remains are handed over to his family.

“My Heart Refused To Believe He Had Died”

Back in Ladakh, Morup’s now 75-year-old wife, Konchak Yangskit, says the grief has never fully faded, even as other memories dim with age. Despite performing cremation prayers at the time, she says she could never fully accept his death without having seen his body.

What remains of Morup today are his medals, a handful of photographs from his climbing days, and an official certificate from the Chinese government recording his summit at 5:30 pm on 10 May 1996.

His son, Punchok Dorjai, has said that should the recovery succeed, the family plans to hold a funeral near Martyrs Park in Leh, Ladakh’s capital, honouring his father as a martyr who died serving the country — a distinction he believes the other climbers who died alongside him deserve as well. The family also intends to keep the green boots themselves as a lasting memento of his legacy.