Back in February, Liu Chen-chun, a 19-year-old from Miaoli, Taiwan, traveled to Nepal with her 21-year-old boyfriend Liang Sheng-yueh to go trekking in the Langtang region in the northern part of the country.
On March 3, the couple told their parents they would be in touch by March 10. But their families never heard from them. Liu and Liang's parents then traveled to Nepal to seek formal assistance in finding them.
On Wednesday, after 47 days, search and rescue crew from Asian Trekking Agency found the couple — they had been traveling without guides or porters — lying in a canyon under a waterfall in village in Dhading district. Liang greeted the rescuers, and "with great sorrow, pointed to Liu and told the team she was no longer alive."
Liang told Asian Trekking he and Liu were trapped in the cave on March 11, after they slipped down on the snow while trying to look for a settlement near the river in the valley.
"They were unable to climb back up and out, nor climb down due to the steep cliffs on all sides," a post on Asian Trekking's Facebook page read.
The two had eaten all the food they had with them by the fifth day, and survived on water and salt until they were discovered by the search and rescue team.
Liu died just three days before they were found.
Rescuers then airlifted Liang, as well as Liu's body, out of the ravine. Liang has been hospitalized at the Grande Hospital in Kathmandu.
According to local media, he was found with maggots growing on his legs and had lost more than 66 pounds, but is currently in stable condition.
Liu's last Facebook post — which she wrote while she and Liang were in India in February — is now being widely shared after the news of her death.
At the time, the couple's bikes had broken down, so they were traveling by train. In her post, Liu wrote in detail about her observations from her second-class carriage, about the people they saw out the window and the vendors who sold water and coffee beans on the train.
"In the empty carriage, we had a fight over something very small," she wrote. "But when you are traveling, even the tiniest thing can make the rest of your journey unbearable. I'd rather see our fight as something we did to prevent the weight of this journey from being too light, that we had to use this fight to add weight to it.
"I stood, and walked towards his chair. Sitting down, I let out the breath that I had been holding, before I truly started to cry. I had to use all of my might to control my emotions, and to permit myself to let the tears fall. Otherwise, the train would not have been able to continue journeying into that expansive night, and I would not have been able to stay in that carriage with him."
People were very moved by her post, praising her for showing them "how beautiful and profound life is."
And are now paying their tributes.
