“Mom, it was so dark. It was too cold,”he told me when I hugged him for the first time in the middle of the jungle of Phulchoki, said the mother of the missing boy John Tamang who was found after a week on Wednesday.

“I can’t imagine the trouble my son went through. He survived the ordeal by god’s grace,” added Rima Tamang on Thursday, who was surrounded by journalists, relatives and the well wishers in Gwarko based B&B Hospital.  

The 17-year-old schoolboy,  missing for the past one week was found alive on Wednesday at 4 pm from the dense jungle of Phulchoki. The boy was rescued by a team of Rescue Through South Asia.

The jungle lies just above the Godawari, 11km east from Kathmandu.

He was found some three kilometers down the top of Phulchoki hill (highest hill in Kathmandu valley), one meter down from the road in a gorge marked 'Danger Zone' by the Nepal Army.

After the missing boy was found alive miraculously,  he was rushed in an ambulance to Gwarko based B & B Hospital by a the rescue team and Nepal Police.  

John, the six grader student at Thasikhel based Ajaya Shiksha Sadan, was then immediately admitted to Intensive Care Center (ICU).  The hospital premise remained crowded with relatives, well wishers and politicians.

Doctor Om Prakash Adhikari, Internist and Physician at the Hospital, said, the boy is out of danger. “We are giving him (John) preliminary medication and he is recovering accordingly. He has an infection in the chest. We are administering antibiotic,” said Adhikari.

“Since he was left isolated for a week, he is in a close observation under a psychiatrist and for further investigation of his injury and cardiologists are also monitoring his health condition,” said Adhikari.

Doctors suspect, he was able to survive eating snow, however, what did the boy eat during past one week is still unknown.

The parents of the boy is going organise a press meet on Saturday, when the boy will be revealing his ordeal in the forest. "He is too weak now, by Saturday he can speak, and he will be sharing everything," said Gautam Tamang, the boy's father.

“I take it as a miracle. God saved him. How can a person can survive without food and water for a week,” said his the father  who is a tourist guide.

The boy was hiking with 11 of his friends, led by School Principal Durga Bahadur Oli. After the boy went missing, the parents staged a protest blaming the incident occurred due to the principal’s negligence.

“This is a sheer negligence from the school Principal,” said Sarita Aryal, senior vice-chairman of  Guardian Association of Nepal, who was also present in the hospital.

“We have found that the school didn’t inform where it was taking the children. And they didn’t take any precautions regarding safety of the children before taking them for the tour. How can one teacher handle 11 children in a jungle.” Said Aryal.

John is originally from Dharan and has a twin brother. He has been living in Thashikhel with his parents.

This is not only the case, according to Binod Silwal, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) at Metropolitan Police Circle in Satdobato, every year, two to three people get lost in the jungle of Pholchoki.

Last year on April,  a Twinanese couple was found 47 days after they wet missing while trekking at Rubi Bally in Dhading district. A rescue team had found the missing Tiwanese, Liang Sheng-yo, alive, and his girlfriend Liu Chen-chun dead, stuck in a snow-covered area.