10 | The Hero Project

You're listening to Status Untraced, a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast. This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.

This is the path where Dustin Alexander was last seen. It's been a long time since I set out into the wilderness alone, but this time is special. I want to do these ancient practices under an influence that may allow me to see the magic, if it exists at all.

Marching on for hours, we finally reach a clearing. Perched atop. a grassy knoll rests a rock hut.

Tundabush is the rest stop, where the porter was sent ahead to prepare food, where the mysterious couple passed by and did not stop, and where Baba arrived without Justin.

Jagdish, is this it?

I look at the ledge, just 100 yards away, in a valley swallowed by immense beauty. For such an epic life, it's such a strange place to be murdered, to die, or to leave it all behind.

In his final journal entry, Justin included a photo of what he packed, a metal pot, a plastic cup, utensils, a leather journal, dry food and plastic wrap, and assorted camping essentials. Yet, it was only a red butane lighter, an umbrella, a backpack, rain cover stuffed with a scarf and head wrap, and a flute staff standing upright in the ground that were found.

What does the story these pieces tell?

In the moment, the chances of answering that question felt impossible. What I didn't know then was the things I was about to be told, the testimonies we were about to hear, would start to bring this journey to an end.

He said he remembers Justin, he remembers the Baba. He's down to interview.

We're guided to a smoky tent when we're back in Kirganga. A burning wood stove crackles at the center, and cloth mats cover the floor.

Cross-legged. in the corner sits a thin man with a scruffy gray beard.

Shaking hands proper?

Ashok Giri is called by many as the Tundabhuj Baba. For the past eight summers, he's lived at the stony hut at Tundabhuj. There, on the day Justin disappeared, he remembers Baba Rawat and Anil Kumar passing through and speaking with them.

I'm trying to wrap up loose ends and get definite answers. Given that Ashok Giri was with Baba Rawat moments after Justin disappeared, I want some clarity on the holy man's character. What was his demeanor like that day? Did he seem like someone who had just committed murder?

He actually sent Anil back to the place to go and look for him. Anil, he went there, he took almost three hours searching for him and he came back without any clue.

But not the tourists. They never heard about the tourists being fallen from there.

Jagdish tells Ashok Giri about the mysterious couple, the one Anil said was with Justin and would have passed by the hut. Ashok Giri doesn't recall seeing them, however, gives the name of someone. we should speak to. A girl who possibly might know more about Baba Rawat, Justin and this couple.

But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables, like therapy, become more important than ever. Whether you've been in therapy or not, it helps with coping skills, setting boundaries, and becoming your best self. If you're thinking about starting therapy, try BetterHelp. It's online, convenient, and flexible. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist.

Never skip therapy day again with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash untrace today to get 10% off your first month. That's better. help.com slash untraced.

We hiked back to town, and I found and connected with Swapna. She says in the summer of 2016, she and her brother, Roy, were traveling and sought refuge at a cave in Kirganga. They met Justin at an intimate gathering, and she says he was memorable. But not just for his kindness.

And he and me had a small fight.

And I came to my place and I'm waiting for him, thinking he will come. But he didn't come. And I have a feeling he's dead. That's how he said it.

Every day was there in his kutiya, you know. In his house.

He sat there without fear.

involved in anything.

Sifting through a mix of rumors and accusations only to unearth a sliver of the truth. And a constant barrage of well-meaning suggestions. Talk to this person. Visit that place. Often led us down paths lined with more questions than answers.

Is there a killer? Who is this couple? Do they exist? Who can we trust? What happened to Justin?

Other than tracking down the porter, I followed up on every lead we had. Except one.

You see, I made a phone call months ago to a guy named Ashish Chauhan. A local who participated in the searches for Justin. Our conversation was brief, just 10 minutes or so. But what he said now gnaws at me.

Let's go try Arshdeep's phone.

I don't know what else to do, other than pray he shows. Because as I replay what Ashish said, I'm convinced he found something.

Uh, see,

Give me some more days. I'll update you on this. Let's talk later on.

And he's on his way.

we do not.

It's an outfit that offers a variety of services, including search and rescue.

No one went anywhere. No one went anywhere. Not even the local search and rescue companies came forward. Still missing. Still missing.

There's not a single poster around. Go to Manikarn police station. Just find out the board. They can't remove anything unless that guy either declared dead or hasn't been found. If he's been missing, that board has to be with his name.

And just check out how many names are there. To my knowledge, in this one past decade, more than 100 people have gone missing here. But around five, six names, that's all.

Untraced.

Have you ever had anyone show back up?

Went in the jungles and then never came back. 14 years. And suddenly one day he showed up here in Kusul and people recognized him. So you'll find such cases. Lots of them.

Aware. What they are doing here. Why they come and why they are doing it.

Easily. Mostly Germans.

Russians. Some Israelis.

I got back, got to hear that this Justin guy is missing. So I volunteered with. the family, said I'll be happy to go for the search and rescue. But you'll need to cover basic charges because search and rescue is quite expensive. But I asked them to just pay the basic and I'll happily search for him.

So we took around 12 people in my team and around eight cops. So I was leading a total number of 20 people and for 14 days, we stayed up in the mountains. So there were three search and rescue teams involved. I was hired by the family. And in total, around there were 50 people in the mountains searching for him.

But there were lots of things that no one was discussing.

They will switch like seven days, if someone will go and some new guy will come. So every time new guy will come and he will tell us the story about like hitting the Baba, they would say like, this is bad karma. What we are doing is sin. Right? So hitting a Baba with whom we have nothing.

In fact, there is no case against him. He told that to the cops that it hurts. Let me smoke. Give me my joint. But they never gave it to him and it was beatings and pain only.

Baba Rawat suffered from beatings, the tumors and withdrawal.

Imagine the torment that does to the mind of a frail man.

Perhaps he saw only one way out. Police hit Baba for information?

There's no evidence, no fact to it. But I heard that he, not recently, around one and a half years back, I was on the trail of Kiryanga. I met a guy who is from Naktan. He told me, do you know that there was an update on that guy's death? Which guy?

That American guy for whom you were searching. So I told him what I heard about him. So he told me there was one Gaddi. And Gaddi is a shepherd, right? So these shepherds are migrants who stay up there in the mountains for like entire summer.

So one of them saw him tumbling down the mountain with the bag and all.

So he never told that to cops, but he told that to locals. And then I was a bit curious, because he was suggesting a very particular point from where he could see this. And I asked him, where did he see him? He gave me an exact location where he fell.

You know the story, right? Where he went missing at the same spot, that's called Pathrigarh. So from that certain point, when they were coming back to Tundabhuj, there's a stretch, right? Very dangerous stretch, in fact. So that's the place we really searched for, and we found his belongings there.

And if you believe me, and the person who told that story of him falling down, quite matches the location.

How would he know where was the location?

So I think, yeah, this might have been the case.

It's very hard to wrap your mind around this thought that a guy like Justin could trip at such a point. But even I have, because I was not careful enough.

So that's accidents. It happens. And it happens quite often in mountains.

Unaware of Dhruv Agarwal or the web of disappearances, these boys were merely outsiders who attempted the theft on a whim, an act of teenage stupidity.

Eventually, we part ways with the heart of the Parvati Valley and return to the capital, Kulu, continuing our quest for Anil Kumar's whereabouts.

We reconnect with the superintendent of police. Albeit, it too was useless.

We were ready to give up, until a moment of pure luck came from our guide, Kabir.

It's not Anil Kumar's exact address, but a district in another Indian state, far from our current location, where his family might live.

We don't make the trip. With 1.6 million people spanning over a thousand square miles, it's just too immense of an area for us to hit to find a man with a common name.

Wrapped in the warmth of a home-cooked meal, we spend our last night among the mountains with Arshdeep and Kabir.

The wine flows. The laughter flies.

We recount the adventures and misadventures and we flick through photos, captured moments of our journey, the memories that we'll keep forever.

That night, Arshdeep vows to continue to search for the porter during his motorcycle trips. As we prepare to leave, I entrust him with one of our recorders. And I can feel that if there's a small beacon of hope to solve this case, it's this.

In a flash, we're back on the plane. The engine roars. The propellers whirl. And once again, we rise above the clouds.

The mountain peaks now don a growing white cloak, hinting at the approach of a cold winter.

I should feel tired, maybe even relieved. But I don't.

Instead, there's that pull, a yearning to stay, to explore the untrodden paths, the foods not yet tasted, the beauty not yet seen.

Entangled with that desire is a heaviness. I walk a path that Justin Alexander will never see to the end.

I get to go home.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Little Junaid International Airport.

Four months from now, on April 6th, 2022, Dhruv Agarwal's body will be found off the Kiraganga trekking route.

Pyotr Mushalik and I will stay in touch, talking about Bruno and sharing updates on the podcast.

I'll brief Justin Alexander's mother on our trip.

And through the podcast rollout, I'll keep up with Justin's father.

I know that the items found tell a story about Justin's final moments. A butane lighter for fires and hashish. An umbrella to shield the rain. A scarf and head wrap cocooned within a rain cover, protected from becoming damp. And a flute staff, lodged into soft mud.

The trail was treacherous that day, and most likely, slickened by sporadic showers. Forecast data from 2016 confirm so.

I've heard Justin was murdered. I've heard he disappeared on his own will. I've heard he fell off that cliff and is gone. What happened to him? The answer?

The truth?

It's simply the version of the story you wish to believe. I have a theory, something I'll reveal at a later time. Because, no matter how it ends, it's not the most important chapter of his life.

I think about, you know, I don't want to be a self-absorbed narcissist. And I feel weird posting a selfie of me riding a motorcycle. Like, I don't know, I think about this a lot. And, you know, like, maybe I should just live my life and just keep it to myself. But there's something nice to share who you are with the world.

And I feel like what I'm doing is I'm living out the life of my heroes and I'm sharing my heroic self. In his 36 years, Justin lived more lives than I've ever dreamt of. He strived to be his most authentic self. He walked the razor's edge. And he pushed the limits of human endurance.

But that type of life requires balance. It requires recognizing the line between adventuring boldly and adventuring blindly. Both come at a risk. The latter widens it.

Survival and, ultimately, truly living calls for wellness of the body and mind.

There is no doubt Justin Alexander struggled with that. He was human. And he was flawed. But even in all his failures, there are lessons to be learned.

I definitely became a social outsider, the quiet loner kid. And I found my solace in nature. And so I basically decided that, you know, I didn't really fit in socially. So fuck everybody and fuck society. I'm going to go, like, be a hero.

Recently, Terry Shetler dug up some of his son's old diaries and journals.

He sent me a photo of a tattered page dated December 2, 2010,, long before Justin retired and set out on his motorcycle. It's titled, The Hero Project.

If I could do anything in life, what would it be? If I were infinitely wealthy, what would I do? What is it that just thinking about it makes me excited to be alive? These have all the same answer. I would make myself into my own hero, meaning I would create an imaginary hero, someone I wish I could be, and then become him.

I need to do this while I'm young. Perhaps in the meantime, I should start a journal called The Hero Project to document my transformations between now and then.

I asked Terry if he believes that the day one journals we recovered from Justin's iCloud were the foundation to this project. He says, yes.

Justin Alexander changed my life. I never met him, and he changed my life. And I know I'm not the only one.

That's the impact of his legacy. All of it. The good. The bad. His wisdoms.

His musings. His shortcomings. His benevolence. His quest for meaning in the face of the unknown. His kindness to strangers.

His unwavering courage to follow his heart. He wanted so dearly to become a hero, I wish I could have gotten the chance to tell him he already was one.

What he accomplished propels me to challenge my doubts and think about my purpose.

I've held onto a bucket list of cities I want to travel to and things I wish to experience in this life. But now it's different. I don't want to pursue it for the thrill, but for growth. To find ways to give back and inspire. And more and more, I've been dreaming about it.

Talking about it. Contemplating when to devise a plan for it. But on a random Wednesday morning, I act on it.

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna book it right now. I book a flight for three o'clock that afternoon. The destination?

San Jose, Costa Rica.

I don't have a place to stay. I don't know anyone there. I don't know what adventures await me. But I surrender.

I just go.

And it's everything.

We're still taking tips. So if you want to reach out, please email us at statusuntraced at gmail.com or leave us a message at 507-407-2833..

Make sure you're following the podcast to stay updated on all our latest episodes, because there's something special. you won't want to miss. A roundtable discussion featuring myself, Payne Lindsey, along with Jonathan Skeels and Alex Vespistead. We'll dive deep into the mystery of what happened to Justin, sharing our thoughts and insights. You'll get to hear various theories, including my own, as we explore the case in detail.

This is a project that took us countless hours to weave together. We set out to accomplish a lot, but at the end of the day, there is one goal I constantly thought about. Is this the way Justin would want his legacy? told? To answer that, I would go back to his words, and one particular journal entry from 2014 spoke to me.

It reads, Become the adventurer. through YouTube, blog and Facebook. Eventually, a network will pick me up and fund my lifestyle. Not hardcore survivor man, but more rugged, going tribal type with style. Be authentic.

A bit of both worlds. Sex, drugs, and adventure. Never sell out. I am who I want to be. I am awesome.

To do something dangerous with style.

I am humbled to have been able to share Justin's story, and none of it could have been possible without this incredible team. Status Untraced is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Our executive producers are Alex Vespistead, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsey. Producers are Meredith Stedman and myself. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.

Consulting. producer is Jonathan Skeels. Associate editors are David Bash and Charles Rosner of Getup Productions, with additional editing by Sydney Evans. Voice acting provided by Johnny Lavallee. Artwork by Trevor Eiler.

Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Colder Heavens by Blanco. White. Mix by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group.

We are forever grateful for Arshdeep Sharma and Kabir Sharman. We hope to see you again soon. A big shout out to Kurt Vespistead, our accounting wizard, for keeping all our numbers in check throughout the series. And also a special shout out to Susie Dunner for putting up with our late nights and ramblings for the past four years. Lastly, I can't express enough my gratitude to each and every person who took the time to interview with us.

It's your stories that keep Justin's legacy alive. I hope to be able to share my next adventure with you soon. But in the meantime, I'll leave you with Justin's motto. Be kind and do epic shit.

300 ad-free episodes as well as subscriber-only specials. Subscribe now at tenderfootplus.com