In Brazil, near the Amazon, a British traveler disappeared, who alone wanted to go from the source of this river to its mouth. The woman described in detail the course of her expedition on Twitter, where in the last days before her disappearance she spoke of armed people who met her on the way, and strange strangers next to her tent. The police have already detained several suspects, and rescuers continue to search for a traveler in the Brazilian jungle.

British resident 43-year-old Emma Kelty quit her job as a headmaster in 2014 and decided to devote herself entirely to travel. In June of this year, she went on an expedition along the Amazon, and last week on Wednesday, according to the BBC, she went missing. She sounded the alarm, and the rescuers who went to her rescue managed to find some of her belongings, but not the traveler's body.

Emma wanted to cross the river from its source in Peru to its mouth in Brazil by the Atlantic Ocean. The woman went on the expedition alone and talked about the progress of her journey on Twitter. At first everything went well. Emma rafted down the river in her kayak, met locals, enjoyed wildlife views, and posted joyful selfies to her feed.

“View of the source right before I started rafting down it. A couple of failed starts, but a start has been made."

“Probably the best lunch a traveler can have.”

But, starting in August, disturbing incidents began in Emma's life. The woman almost always spent the night in some sparsely inhabited places alone in a tent. And despite the fact that the traveler could watch stunningly beautiful sunsets, much more often she saw some suspicious strangers near her temporary home.

“Hmm… Tonight, I think I’m going to have a sleepless night. Two young fellows and now a third landed on my island, although they did not approach me.

Not far from her tent, she often noticed the tracks of some large wild animals and even heard them at night. Every day, Emma walked an average of 40-50 kilometers, and by the end of August, she began to complain more and more about fatigue and the lack of a human voice.

I officially declare that I am tired to the point of impossibility. Every night someone comes to my tent with a torch between 12 and 3 am... I can't take it anymore.

On September 10, she tweeted that she went to the Koari region. Other travelers warned her that this was a very dangerous area. According to local media, there is a route along which drug dealers from Colombia carry drugs and they are often attacked by pirates. But, despite all the warnings, Emma did not deviate from her route.

“So, in Coari or nearby (100 kilometers), my boat will be stolen and I will be killed. Cute".

Two days passed, and the warnings began to come true.

I turned and saw 50 men in boats with guns!!! You should have seen my face!!

But, apparently, this meeting passed without any consequences for the traveler. The very next day, she tweeted about a rather sweet meeting.

“Yesterday ended with me meeting three cute locals and two kittens who slept near my tent at night (well, until they started playing catch-up at one in the morning). Such a big change in one day… But this river… Every kilometer is different, and just because one area is bad doesn’t mean…”

This tweet was the last that Emma wrote. On Wednesday, she sent an alarm and has not been seen since. Local authorities immediately sent a group of 60 rescuers to help the traveler, but all they managed to find was her kayak and personal belongings.

Police say they have already arrested three suspects in Emma's alleged murder. One of them - an unnamed teenager - said that he, along with other young people, robbed Emma, ​​stealing her phone, computer and camera, and then shot her and threw her body into the river.

Upon learning of this news, people began to express support for the family of the deceased in social networks. Many have said that traveling to Brazil is not the best idea, as many parts of the country are not safe.

"A very sad and pointless loss of such a beautiful bright light, my sincere condolences to Emma's family and friends."

“Here in Brazil we have 60,000 murders a year, my advice is don't come here! Drugs, poverty and impunity lead to such tragedies.”

“I am so sorry that such a tragedy happened! Brazil is out of control! Bandits have no boundaries! My sincere condolences to Emma's family!"

Rescuers continue to look for Emma, ​​who is not the first time went on an expedition alone. She became the sixth woman to ski on her own to the South Pole. Yes, and seriously preparing for a trip to the Amazon.

I took a self-defense course to learn how to disarm people. So if I encounter any dangerous situation, I will be ready for it.

Perhaps, in the case of Emma, ​​it is worth paying attention to another resident of the UK, who considers himself the most unlucky traveler, but at the same time continues to go to some of the most dangerous places on the planet. Why then be surprised that something. But not all trips end the same way. For example, one resident of China (yes, it is possible) just to deliver his daughter to the university.

There's a new survival thriller on ivi, Death Trail, and we've put together a few more stories of people who made it out of the wild alive, despite the odds against it.

death trail

Body at Brighton Rock, 2019

If you don't think you're qualified to be a ranger, chances are you are. An inexperienced and unassembled national park employee, Wendy, while detourning a tourist route, loses her way, loses her map and ends up somewhere many kilometers from the base, not knowing how to get back. To top it off, the girl finds a corpse at the foot of a cliff. She radios the discovery, and as it's getting dark, she's told not to go anywhere and to keep an eye on the body all night.

Jungle

The film is based on the memoirs of the Israeli traveler Yossi Ginsberg, set out in his book Lost in the Jungle. A true heartbreaking tale of adventure and survival." Together with two friends and a strange guide, he went on a hike through the Amazon jungle, and at one fine moment they were separated and were forced to get out to the people one by one. Survived, by the way, not all.

Life of Pi

Life of Pi, 2012

After a shipwreck, boy Pi finds himself on a boat in the middle of the ocean, along with a tiger, an orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena. The strange voyage will last for many days, and Pi has two versions of how events unfolded.

At a depth of 6 feet

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain, 2017

One snowboarder, filled with internal contradictions and problems with drugs, decided to ride on a wild track in a snowstorm and, of course, got lost. He wandered through the mountains for a whole week until rescuers found him, and this is the real story of Eric Lemark.

survivor

The Revenant, 2015

Hugh Glass was crippled by a bear during a hunting expedition. Friends, fearing the Indians, left him with his son and one of his comrades, but he cowardly killed his son, and left Glass himself to die alone and rushed to civilization away from the savages. The only thing he didn't take into account was Hugh's survivability.

No one knows how it all really happened, but Michael Punk used the facts of the biography of a very real hunter Hugh Glass for the novel The Revenant.

Lost in the ice

Huxley, the pilot of the crashed plane, survives well in the icy Arctic desert and calmly waits for help from the mainland. But one day a helicopter crashes next to him, and the woman who survived at the same time needs medical help, so the hero calculates the chances, ties the wounded woman to a sled and sets off on a dangerous journey to civilization.

127 hours

The film was based on the autobiographical book of a young rock climber and cave walker Aron Ralston. On one weekend in 2003, without telling anyone where he was going, he went for a walk in the canyon. At one point, gaping, he stumbled and fell into a crevice.

The moral of the film is simple - if you like dangerous adventures alone, tell relatives or friends your route.

Impossible

Lo Impossible 2012

Everest

Everest does not forgive mistakes, greed and frivolity, and Everest does not forgive generosity and selflessness. Here reign laws that can be called inhumane. However, hundreds and hundreds of people are trying to conquer this height. On that ill-fated day in the spring of 1996, two commercial expeditions set off to climb at once, which included both experienced climbers and tourists who had no experience in conquering eight-thousanders.

Documentary. 2011. Director: Peter Von Puttkamer. The documentary is dedicated to the topic of the ongoing search for traces of the expedition of British Colonel Percy Fossett that once disappeared in the Amazon. He is one of the cult travelers who explored the Amazon, and today bold adventurers follow in his footsteps in search of ancient cities lost in the jungle.

Percy Fossett devoted many years to the study of South America, the regions of Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. He made his first expedition to South America in 1906 for topographical purposes, in order to create maps of unexplored territories on the border of Brazil and Bolivia. After that, he made several more expeditions. Fascinated by the study of legends, over time, the colonel focused on finding the so-called "lost city of Z". Fossett believed that the mysterious untouched "Lost City of Z" of the Indian Empire was deep in the jungle somewhere in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. It was there that in 1925 he went on his last expedition.

Percy Fossett was also one of the first known field journalists to the world - he worked as a correspondent ( ) and transmitted regular reports from the expedition. Actually, this was his main official "legend". Millions of readers read his field reports from the jungle about the progress of the expedition to search for "City Z". The colonel passed the materials to the world with the help of couriers. And then one day the last messenger was sent from the jungle, after which communication with the world was cut off ...

The mystery of the disappearance of Colonel Fossett excites the minds of researchers to this day. The main hypothesis is that the colonel was killed by the Indians. However, a number of researchers have big doubts about this version. One of these brave adventurers, Niall McCann, decided to conduct his own investigation to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the legendary traveler, Colonel Fossett, in the jungle. The tracker has several clues that, in his opinion, will help to find traces of the disappeared expedition ... The investigation begins with a mysterious place - the Dead Horse camp, where, according to the data, Fossett organized the group's camping ..

P.S.: Members of the Pathfinder travel club have been on expeditions to the Amazon several times already, and interest in such trips has not only not faded, but has inflamed even more. The story of Colonel Fossett is a great reason to think about developing a new route, for example, with the working title "In the Footsteps of Fossett". Those wishing to join such an adventure with pleasure

In September 2007, the plane of the famous traveler and record holder Steve Fossett disappeared in the mountains of Nevada. He set 116 records at sea and in the air, for the first time in the world circled the Earth in a balloon and made a non-stop flight around the planet in an airplane. Conquered 400 mountain peaks. The purpose of Stephen Fossett's last flight was to find a flat area to set a land speed record.

Today, few people know that he had a predecessor - Percival Fossett, also a famous traveler who lived at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Whether they were relatives or namesakes - God knows, but the fact that they were relatives in spirit is beyond doubt. Only Percival Fossett was engaged not in records, but in the search for Atlantis. Like Steve Fossett, he also went missing on his last expedition into the jungles of South America.

Expedition goes into the jungle

In April 1925, the expedition of Colonel P. H. Fossett left for the wild jungles of the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso. It consisted of only three people - Fossett himself, his son Jack and cameraman R. Reimel. The expedition did not return and her search led to nothing. The purpose of the expedition was to search for the dead cities lost in the wilds of Brazil - the remnants of the oldest civilization in the world, and possibly Atlantis itself! This was his main meaning of life and its purpose. The fact is that abandoned cities were found in Central America, but not in South America.

Colonel Percival Fossett was neither an amateur nor a novice in the jungle. Having started his service in Ceylon, in 1893 he discovered mysterious letters carved on the rocks, unlike any known alphabet. Thus began his interest in the ancient world, which was further intensified when, on the instructions of the Royal Geographical Society, he demarcated the boundaries between Bolivia, Peru, Brazil and Paraguay in 1906-1911. Work was often carried out where there were white spots on the maps, and the foot of a white man did not set foot. An enthusiastic researcher carefully collected and recorded Indian legends about lost cities and treasures, worked in the archives of South American capitals.

Dead cities in the wilds of the Amazon

"The study of the interior spaces of this continent began shortly after the expedition of Columbus. Numerous detachments of land pirates - bandeiristas - were sent deep into the mainland.

“Wandering through the impenetrable forests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins, the bandeirists sometimes found not gold, but dead cities abandoned by no one knows when and built. So, back in 1841, in the public library of Rio de Janeiro, a report was found a native of the state of Minas Gerais. In 1743, he, among a small detachment of the Portuguese and 300 Indians, went in search of the legendary silver mines. They wandered in the green hell of the rainforest for 10 years! And all to no avail. It was already decided to go out into populated areas and stop searching when their party came to an unfamiliar mountain range.Then the path lay through a gorge in which there was an ancient pavement, and in the valley lay a majestic dead city.

The entrance to it was framed by three arches made of huge slabs. Some writings were carved above the central arch. Further they opened a street with two-story houses, then a square, in the center of which stood a huge stone column, and on it was a statue of a young man. One of his hands rested on his hip, and the other pointed to the north. One of the majestic buildings with wide steps was obviously a palace. Everywhere adventurers came across intricate stone carvings, bas-reliefs and sculptures, wall paintings and mysterious inscriptions. Only the central part of the city survived, the rest lay in ruins.

Another evidence of the presence of lost cities in the jungle is the report of the commandant of Fort Iguatemi about a dead city discovered by his people in 1773 in the forests near the Rio Pekeri. It had a regular layout, stood on both banks of the river and was surrounded by a wall and a moat. Local Indians even knew its ancient name - Gaira, and claimed that it was built in ancient times by white people.

The Lost Expedition

Archival research, direct contact with savages during topographic expeditions, convinced Fossett of the reality of these reports and prompted him to create an original theory. He believed that originally South America consisted of several islands, one of which was Brazil. Over time, the islands connected, and where the plains were now located, there were once sea straits. The white settlers who came from the north created the most ancient civilization on this continent, the age of which is 50-60 thousand years. White aliens were associated with the ancient cultures of Egypt, Asia Minor and Atlantis. Gradually, this ancient civilization degraded, and frequent earthquakes accelerated the death of cities. They were abandoned, and the population went into the forests. They were the enigmatic white Indians, rumors of whose existence often reached Percival Fossett.

Thus, perfectly prepared for jungle travel and armed with his theory, Fossett undertook several small expeditions into the interior of the mainland. Surely he managed to find something, since in his letters to London he said that he now knew exactly the location of the dead city mentioned in the 1753 report.

Percival Fossett's expedition disappeared into the jungle in 1925. Then news began to reach that he, along with his companions, was captured by the Indians, and even became their leader. The colonel's wife, Nina Fossett, believed until the end of her days that her husband and son were alive and would definitely return. In 1933, in the area where the Fossett group had disappeared, a completely intact his theodolite compass was found. And in 1934, a dog returned to the hacienda from which Fossett had left, which he had taken with him to guard the camp. However, the ongoing numerous searches for the missing expedition yielded nothing. Fearing persecution by robbers-gold miners, Fossett did not tell anyone his route and warned that his journey could last 2-3 years. Therefore, the search began too late, and where to look, it was unknown.

Thus ended the path of one of the tireless explorers of South America, who erased many white spots from its map. Not a single work on the geography of this continent is published without mentioning his name. Fossett's merits were highly appreciated by the governments of many Latin American states. Following the stories of Fossett during conversations with him, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his famous "Lost World", introducing him into the story under the name of Professor Challenger.

Whether he found the lost city - the dream of his life, or died without reaching it, probably no one will know. However, the search for lost cities in the jungles of Brazil should be continued, and there, perhaps, traces of Fossett, an outstanding geographer and romantic, will be found.

Three years ago, the media wrote one after another about the girls who disappeared in the Panamanian selva. But neither officials, nor rescuers, nor journalists have been able to give an unequivocal answer to the question of what happened in April 2014. The versions put forward by the police, on closer examination, crumbled almost faster than the sand from the beaches of Bocas del Toro (it was there that the students first rested) in their hands. Unbelievable, but true: the more the authorities became aware, the more strange this case seemed. The evidence, designed to shed light on what happened, only added to the mystery of this tragedy.

Two pretty students from Holland wanted to improve their Spanish in the summer, and at the same time have a little rest in Panama - you must admit, this desire looks absolutely harmless and is not associated with extreme sports. But no one could have guessed how this trip would end. If we omit the details and state only the essence of the events, then we get literally the following: the girls went to the mountains, fixing their ascent on camera, and then something inexplicable happened, which led to their death.

This story somewhat reminded us of the story that happened to the Dyatlov group at the Mountain of the Dead. Alas, despite the fact that the police have a technical arsenal at their disposal, which investigators never even dreamed of during the Soviet era, this did not bring the investigation one step closer to unraveling ...

So, Lisanna Fron and Chris Kremers from the small Dutch town of Amersfoort carefully planned their trip to Latin America.

Their vacation began in the resort of Bocas del Toro, where the friends just rested - swimming, sunbathing, flirting with guys and posting beach photos on social networks.

Two weeks passed, on March 29 the girls moved to Boquete - away from the ocean and closer to the mountains, to start studying in language courses. However, shortly after their arrival, it turned out that Spanish classes would start a week later. The free time Lisanna and Chris decided to spend on exploring the picturesque surroundings - it was a stone's throw to the jungle - and met the guide Feliciano Gonzalez, from whom they ordered and paid for two tours. It was he who sounded the alarm when on April 2 his clients did not appear at the meeting.

Apparently, they are quite athletic (Lisanna, for example, played volleyball for the student team), but extremely frivolous girls, dressed only in tops and shorts, who took one small backpack with a minimum of things for two, thought that they could climb the trail "El Pianisto", which is approximately 6 km long, to the famous Baru volcano and on your own. However, many did just that, because special equipment was not required.

According to the employees of the cafe, located at the beginning of this very difficult path, the Dutch nevertheless took with them a guide dog named Blue, who was specially trained to find the way home. However, an hour later, the husky ran to the establishment alone. Meanwhile, several people immediately told the police that they had seen the tourists return from the route, but no one remembered where they went next. An attempt to time the movements of Lisanna and Chris, to put it mildly, was unsuccessful.

The expanded search operation will later be called the largest in the history of the country. Experts from the Netherlands who specially flew to Panama, equipped with the most modern equipment, joined the search for the missing. Hundreds of people on both sides of the Cordillera were interviewed, and three helicopters and many search dogs were involved. A group of volunteers under the leadership of the same Gonzalez combed the selva along with policemen and rescuers, and Chris's parents also arrived, who also began to look for their daughter and her friend, but, alas, all to no avail. Fron and Kremers seemed to have disappeared without a trace.

At first, the investigation focused on the version that the girls simply got lost, because the jungle path leading from the outskirts of the city to the observation deck at an altitude of just under 2000 meters above sea level ended at the top only in guidebooks, but in fact went down the slope mountains towards the Caribbean. And it did not look at all like the beautiful sidewalks and footpaths in the Netherlands, although it was clearly visible. The main thing was not to go off the path. But the girls did just that...

The assumption that the Dutch women were kidnapped was also considered. The police were waiting for the criminals to demand a ransom for them. However, this did not happen. At the end of the month it seemed that the entire country, with the possible exception of the jungle, was plastered with advertisements announcing a substantial reward for any information about the missing students.

A version was also put forward that the girls were torn to pieces by wild animals, among the alleged killers - predators, the same cougar or jaguar.

Scary finds

Only after 2 months a new track appeared in the case, leading to the other side of the Cordillera Range. The Indians found a backpack belonging to the girls on the banks of a mountain river. How he ended up about 20 kilometers from the beginning of "El Pianisto" - the experts could not find out. Its contents appear to have remained intact: swimsuits, two pairs of sunglasses, money, documents, a camera, and cell phones. The police had high hopes for gadgets.

Two months later, upstream, fragments of the bones of girls and boots with feet were found. Neatly (!) laid out denim shorts that belonged to Kremers lay on a large stone.

In other words, the experts had enough material to understand the causes of the tragedy. But it was not there!

Fingerprints that did not belong to their owners were found on the girls' smartphones, some of them were repeated. According to one report, the phones were picked up by about 10 people. According to others - at least 30. Moreover, these were people of different sex and age. Attempts to call 911 were recorded in the memory of the devices. The phones were turned on and off many times. Moreover, during the last dialing of the number, the gadgets were not unlocked.

But this fact fades when you learn about the photographs taken by someone on the night of April 8th. Over a three-hour period, (!) 90 shots were taken, 87 of them - in complete darkness, without a flash, albeit with an open lens. On the remaining three, something is still visible. The scariest and most mysterious shot is Chris's red hair, taken close-up.

And if the first two uninformative pictures of the soil were published in the press immediately, then the girl's parents decided to show the third one only six months later - on the air of one of the TV shows. However, we never saw the whole frame in its entirety. Whether they deliberately closed its upper right corner (if so, why?), is unknown.

The discovered bone fragments also look extremely suspicious. They are too white, as if specially cleaned. Too improbable seems the police's assumption that the hip bone was bitten off by predators (no teeth marks were found on it).

Until now, many Internet forums are discussing this tragedy, trying to put forward at least one harmonious version, which would fit all the evidence. But there are a few things that get in the way of doing this.

Firstly, the fact that the testimony of eyewitnesses who claim to have seen the returning girls openly contradicts the data stored on electronic devices raises questions. Let's say gadgets can also "lie", not everyone and not always set the correct date and time of shooting on the camera. But why should witnesses mislead the investigation? Is it possible that they were trying to buy the time needed to smuggle pretty white girls to the same Costa Rica and sell them into sexual slavery?

Another topic of intense discussion is frequency of calls to the rescue service. Why did the girls dial the coveted number for several days at the same time? Did they have access to smartphones at other times, and if not, why not?

Whether found by accident, or a thrown backpack with neatly folded things it seems to evoke the idea that the students were killed not by people, but by animals who do not need documents and money. But why, then, are there no traces of teeth on the found fragments of bones?

Although the girls did not immediately understand that climbing to the top in the tropics is not much like an easy pleasure walk, but even a few hours spent in the jungle should have been enough to realize the thought that it was not worth undressing there. What made Chris take off his shorts and stay in only his underwear? Where did the students really die - by the river, or did someone bring and leave body parts on the shore?

Why did Chris's parents not want to show that same frame for so long? Is it possible that something very important is depicted on the overlapped fragment, giving a clue to unraveling a terrible secret?

The simplest assumption is that the girls died as a result of their injuries, because it is so easy to slip and fall on wet stones, but this version does not explain the fact that only body fragments were found.

American journalist Jeremy Crete of The Daily Beast has been following the case since its inception. It was at his disposal not so long ago that previously unpublished pictures came into their possession, which show that the girls tried to give SOS signals. But the available information still does not confirm the official version of the accident.

“We had less than 10% of the body of one person, and less than 5% of the other. This is too little, ”a forensic anthropologist from Panama, who preferred not to be named, said in May 2017 in an interview with Crete. Moreover, this expert generally considers the existing set of body fragments to be “extremely strange.” He assures that the complete absence of marks on the bones proves that the police were mistaken in passing off the incident as an accident. The journalist himself is firmly convinced that a serial killer is operating in the tropics, because women continue to disappear in the same places.

Another expert from the Panamanian Institute of Medicine, which trains coroners, agrees with Jeremy: “Whoever committed this terrible atrocity was incredibly smart and left almost no trace. It will be very difficult to catch him." According to this criminologist, the Panamanian authorities do not undertake to investigate this case, realizing that it is almost impossible to find a real criminal. “It is easier for them to ignore the incident or write it off as an accident, so as not to fall face down in the dirt,” the specialist concluded.

What do you think happened in Panama in 2014?