A Mexican civil defense official said on Friday searchers had found the body of an American man who went missing in rugged mountains in central Mexico four days ago, after going on a hike.

Carlos Mandujano said a search team found the body of Hari Simran Singh Khalsa, 25.

The civil defense coordinator for Morelos State said the body was found on Friday in one of the narrow gorges or ravines that crisscross the rugged mountains near the colonial town of Tepoztlan.

Khalsa went missing after going on a hike wearing only a T-shirt and shorts and with little food and water, according to his wife and a Mexican official.

The search began Tuesday after he went missing in Tepoztlan – about an hour south of Mexico City – and included 150 searchers and three helicopters, said Mandujano.

On Friday, before Khalsa’s body was discovered, his wife, Ad Purkh Kaur, said that he was a yoga instructor who was born and raised in Brooklyn. The couple lived in Leesburg, Virginia, and were planning to move back to Brooklyn at the end of the month.



Kaur, whose legal name is Emily Smith, had said she and her husband arrived to Tepoztlan for a yoga retreat on 26 December. She said her husband decided to go for a day hike in the nearby mountains on Tuesday, and left with only a T-shirt, shorts, a liter of water, a handful of trail mix and a knife. Temperatures in the area can get below freezing this time of year.

Kaur said she heard from her husband at 12.30pm CST on Tuesday, when he sent a picture of himself on a mountain top, pointing down to the site of the yoga retreat where she was, with the message: “Looking down on you!”

She last heard from him about two hours after that, at 2.20pm CST, when he sent a text message.

“I accidentally summited another mountain”, he wrote, Kaur said. “Looks like I’ll be a little later coming back. Save me some lunch if you can.”