When Chhiring Dhenduk Bhote, a long-line rescuer, leaves on a mission, he never tells his parents about it, because he doesn’t want to worry them.

“It’s a risky job,” the agile and soft-spoken, 24-year-old tells me, as he leans across the table to make himself heard over the noise in the cafe. I’ve waited weeks for this meeting, because Chhiring has been busy making rounds of the mountains since the start of the climbing season, rescuing people or airlifting the deceased. As the climbing season closed, he was still a part of the crew searching the Dhaulagiri region for a missing Dutchman.

Since his first mission on Amadablam in 2012, when he rescued a Dutch climber with spinal injuries using a long-line sling at 5,600 m, Chhiring has conducted countless rescues. Even if he’s picking the bodies to bring them to their relatives, he says he feels like he’s helping families unite.

“It’s always good for the dead to come back home to their families, right?” he asks me. “And there’s a growing concern over bodies being left on the mountains over the years, so it’s a bit like clearing it up, too.”

Growing up in his village of Chepuwa VDC, Sankhuasabha, Chhiring wanted to become an Agriculture Technician so that he could help modernize farming in his village and help his parents. But when he was 13, his sister fell seriously ill. Being the oldest of six children, the teenager strayed into the mountains of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, ferrying goods and earning some money to send back home. He recalls those days as being synonymous with turmoil as he learnt to cope with loneliness, while doing hard physical labour.

After two years, when his sister got better he went back home and started school again. While pursuing plus two education, he lived with his uncle Tshering Pandey Bhote, in Kathmandu, taking care of his under-construction home. Pandey, a mountain rescuer, soon got Chhiring a job as a supporting climber on small peaks. In 2012, he climbed Everest, after which his uncle also helped him land a long line rescue training opportunity in Switzerland’s Air Zermatt Rescue. Over the years, Chhiring has not only conducted rescues and search on the mountains, but also airlifted dozens of earthquakes survivors. Recue Chhiring, as he has come to be known for being the most active of four long line rescuers, says the site is first established, followed by a recce and preparation gets underway to airlift. He gets suspended on long line sling, clipped to a harness and is flown to the identified area, from where the victim is picked up on triangular mats or nets, depending on the physical condition. The system is the perfect solution to Nepal’s challenging geographical terrain, where choppers cannot land. But it also demands great mental as well as physical strength from the rescuer, who has to learn to think of the deceased as nothing more than a job sometimes, and of survivors as the ultimate trophy. “We’re the only ones with the capacity for conducting rescue operations at elevation of 5,600 m to pluck out the injured and the deceased, or anyone who need life saving rescues,” the Managing Director of Simrik Air, Rajendra Bahadur Singh says. The company charges anything between 20 thousand to 30 thousand dollars for rescue missions. Manang Air and Smrik Air are the private companies offering rescue operations. Simrik Air, the only one providing long line rescue, is planning to add two new choppers in July to their fleet, for a ‘better footing in the rescue industry’.

Rescuers like Chhiring are full-time employees, who draw a monthly salary and get a bonus, every time a life is saved. Besides the pulling out of bodies from under seracs on Everest in April 2014, the rescue of 20 climbers at once from Saribung peak in Mustang last month, has been Chhiring’s most challenging experience, possibly the only so many rescues single-handedly at such high altitude. He lifted off the Nepali high-altitude workers one after the other within a span of seven hours, in what he describes as an extremely draining mission. But Chhiring rested in knowing he’d brought back breadwinners to their families. He tells me, that any Nepali who takes up risky jobs, does so with the intention of looking out for their families.

Some days, Chhiring wakes up feeling strange if he’s had dreams that he’s been flying. Because whenever he’s had those dreams, it’s always been a signal for him to wear his rescue gear, jump on the chopper and go save lives. “It’s not much money, but I know I’m doing something meaningful with my life,” he says, fishing out his phone to show me pictures of people whose lives he’s saved.