Have you seen Jonathan Spollen? Missing in Rishikesh since February 3rd, 2012

Silviup- I cannot have agreed more on the thought !

I (and I speak for myself though I can vouch most of us) cannot judge a person on a few articles he wrote professionally, a few events in his life which might can be circumstantial (the history of being robbed, scammed and past in kashmir)

Also I would not create a flow of events by the suggestions or theories of many.

The desire of finding J is pushing aside logic and rationality. He is expected to be in a orange/white cloak to be fasting in a remote ashram ignorant that his loved ones have gone hysterical.

Davids post above (and I am not judging david in anyway by just a few statements) show he believes or thinks that J might or was in a mental phase where he might have wanted to leave his current life and become a yogi. And if he feels so , I cannot feel otherwise as he knows his son better than any of us.

Am happy to read the updates on whats happening at the behind the screen on the search. Thanks for the update david.

KK I would not go by those some who suggested but now that david says, I am no one to counter that.

Personally I would still want to be rationale and focus on methods to search J considering he is in trouble. Some serious trouble that did not make him contact anyone since months. Have already posted much on it so will not repeat.

<cross-posted with a few>

Maybe a good point again here then (JuliaF had done so just before. I think? Or someone had?) to point to Jonathan's parents' latest recaps:

There is this one by Lynda, his mother, dated March 18th 2012, post #526 on this thread: Here.

Then there is this one by David, his father, dated April 2nd 2012, post #886 on this thread: Here.

They indeed pretty much sum up the situation as it stands, and they are indeed linked to in the starting post #1 of this thread: Here.

I thought his bag was hidden but his sleeping bag & book were laid out?

I meant common in India, Sadhu's & the like, not westerners. Oh boy! how easily we misunderstand one another,it sometimes feels like i'm talking to my wife.
KK

Ironically that would be "Peak season"
KK

And who'd want to present a passport in a hazy scene like that ... given their druthers? Noooobody!

Don't tell me you're finding this out just today. (Shouldn't any "spiritual" school kind of teach this at its core, as well as from the outset, btw?)

It's why some of us like to spell out things keeping onlookers not in-the-know in mind, and to make sure all may reasonably know what the other is talking about, then others accuse us of being wordy, or just full of dung

Any doctors out here who can post more on Kidney stone?
The kidney stone and pain is so obvious in the updates by lynda and I wonder if thought has gone on what can be the worst during this.

Severe Pain - And by severe I mean SEVERE. It gets unbearable, severe pain can impact the nervous system in many ways.

Rupturing internal organs and internal bleeding. blood passing through urine is also a possibility.

Prolonged Stone ailment can impact kidney and can lead to kidney failures.

What if the pain was so unbearable that he did a crazy thing like a opt for strong massage which could rupture organs like intestine?

What happened to reaching out doctors, medical stores to know if someone has being buying medication for an ailing foreigner?

The network of government medical aid should be a good way to reach out the medical officers in villages.

It has been suggested several times to contact pharmacies in the region. (Or drugstores, chemists, whatever they may be known as locally.)

It has been said however by people living there or knowing the region well this can be exceedingly difficult. Since they may be hard to contact, or unresponsive when you do, or to even find contact details for, then.

However,

It indeed then recently struck me so maybe this could work if you can get a local doctor or hospital involved, to spend an afternoon or a few to call around along those lines, fax, send out flyers, etc.? Might that not work? They may well have those contacts that may be hard to access to others, plus perhaps the authority (and of course the local language skills) to actually make them listened to.

If a kidney stone is big enough to jeopardizing someone's life, the doctor should keep the patient for surgery. He might also prescribe treatment to help eliminate the stone/s if they are not life-threatening but in any case the patient should be watched to see if the treatment is going in the positive direction or not and if the stones didn't increase in size in the meantime.
Anyway some people with stones can develop kidney infections which are also hard to cure until the stones are not eliminated.
I don't think it is the case here and because of the reports related to weight loss it might be due to some stomach infection (helycobacter pylori for ex). Some Giardia can also make people to weight loss. Also there are a lot of other diseases where someone will lose weight - I am not a doctor anyway.
The most worrying fact is that India is a country with a full flavor of germs. Some of them might require quite long hospitalizations. For example TB.
This is why a very important approach is to inspect all hospitals/clinics in the region. Ayurvedic ones should be considered also.
I don't want to transform this into a "battle of vanities" because our goal is to provide any help for J family and as I have never been to India I am not aware of those places.

I hope this was one of the first steps that David has done when he was in India!? That's why I've brought this "alternative healers" topic, too.

Silvi, you might feel confused that there's a lot of talking about vanishing into a spiritual journey here. At the beginning of this search before Jonathan's belongings were (partly) found the case seemed similar to another case 7 years ago when a young Australian Ryan Chambers left an Ashram in the early morning, leaving all his stuff behind and disappeared. At a closer look these two cases are not so similar anymore, but there is still a chance that there are parallels as things like this do happen in India.

Just for the sake of completeness, that story is here Backpacker missing in India: Ryan Chambers., while the website devoted to it by his parents and family who are still searching is here http://www.ryanchambers.in/. It had been brought up before on this thread, but can of course never hurt repeating.

They've been in on this thread, so must be aware of it, and I hope the two families have been in touch by now, to share their thoughts and experiences.

Silviup, thanks for being in here, and I think with your expertise you're bringing up some very good points (such as the chance of Jonathan's being in jail somewhere, I don't think that had ever been mentioned as such yet. Being broke and without documentation there, that would indeed seem far from impossible.)

But you are at risk of covering a lot of ground that had been covered before, and so before we know it, we'll all be going around in circles. There is also member Snifferdog on this thread, who has thrown their expertise at conducting searches at it.

I think your input is really welcome (and great that you even found this site and this thread, and are willing to give it your thoughts. You're obviously giving it quite some effort, and the web search that brought you here must have been quite something else on your mind), but could you have a look at those two latest round-up posts by Jonathan's parents? I linked to them again just before, and they are linked to in the starting post #1 of this thread. They will give you a good idea of where things stand, and what has been done so far.

I don't understand - did you read entirely my firs post?
I have used info from here - 2nd April:
Have you seen Jonathan Spollen? Missing in Rishikesh since February 3rd, 2012

That was my only reading here after I have crashed into this topic yesterday night. If this is the info you are talking about - yes I read it!

I have provided the entire set of advices because it looks like a check list - I am not aware what was done and what wasn't. Maybe everything from there was already done or also I might have skipped something - I am not perfect...
I don't even know how was that backpack found, if someone has made any statical search of the place or have just grab it to look inside. Were any 360 degrees pics taken of the place??? Do you know such details? Someone here has provided the info of more items than the backpack were found - is that correct?

I have so few information about the place that I can only provide some very general steps in terms of a search.
There are 82 pages on this - and in some of them people are just discussing the same matter in a contradictory way.

I've been following Jonathan Spollen's disappearance since he was mentioned on this board. I'm an investigative journalist currently based in Los Angeles, but have spent quite a bit of time traveling through India. Most recently I wrote a book about illegal organ trafficking in south asia. You can see some of my work at http://scottcarney.com

Over the years looked at a half-dozen similar cases to Spollen's where westerners have gone missing. The causes are pretty varied--from mundane hazards like being the victims of assault, murder, traffic accidents-- to more unusual stories where people have experienced hallucinations and committed suicide, been convinced to follow charismatic sham gurus, or just getting lost on the banana pancake trail between Goa and Dharmsala.

There is a chance that I will be back in North India this summer and I have a pretty broad range of contacts in law enforcement, diplomatic circles and with some of the more shady operators who frequent South Asia. I sent messages about Spollen to a few promising sources, but haven't turned up anything useful yet.

If I go back this summer I'll try to poke around the hill stations. If he is still mobile he will probably head north in the hot months to Dharmsala, Shimla or Manali. Then again, without his passport or cash, he might have some trouble getting around the way that tourists do.

I have seen quite a few lost souls end up in Goa as well. Since he is a pretty obvious foreigner without many language skills there are only so many places that he is likely to end up. Local people will push him back to the that route as long as he is healthy simply because they won't see any place for him in the hills and villages around rishikesh.

I'd be happy to talk to people on this board about the case. Feel free to get in touch with me at sgcarney@gmail.com

I'm still doing research on a possible book-length project on lost foreigners in India. I also have some pretty solid contacts in the media world if you want to try to get the word out that way.

best,

scott carney

nah if you have any kidney pain like that, its counterintuitive to let anyone touch you..

but it would be interesting to get some medical advice.. what happens if this condition is left untreated, or treated too late.. god forbid he got a severe nasty infection that (sorry to even type this) finished his body, if there were people trying to help him in his final hours.. would they fess up to the police that they had contact with Jonathan (without thinking the finger of balme would be pointed in their direction?) sorry