(China Daily/Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-09-22 09:04

HOTAN, Xinjiang - Rescuers on Friday found two survivors from a missing canoe expedition, 20 days after the six-member Russian group failed to make a rendezvous in Northwest China, media reports said.

Russian expeditioner Alexander Zverev celebrates his miraculous survival after he was rescued on Friday. Russian and Chinese rescuers found Zverev and another member 20 days after the six-man team was reported missing in Xinjiang. [Li Xiang]

Russian and Chinese rescuers found Alexander Zverev - his face pale and his body covered with mud and dust - on a bank along the upper reaches of the Yurungkax River on Friday morning, and found Andrei Pautov in the evening, the reports said.

Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Veronika Smolskaya confirmed Pautov's rescue.

Zverev, 35, had earlier been quoted by ITAR-Tass as saying that his five traveling companions had all been killed in two separate accidents on August 24 and August 27, when their boats overturned. He told Russia's Vesti television that he lived in a cave for 20 days, using tree branches to keep warm.

"Every evening I made a bed for myself from tree branches, tried not to get cold, to preserve heat to keep the body warm," he was quoted as saying.

He climbed to the top of the ravine each day to try and catch the attention of the rescuers he knew would be searching for the team.

Xinhua News Agency reported that when Zverev was found he was able to walk and talk clearly, and was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Hotan city in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Television pictures showed the bearded Alexander Zverev looking thin and dazed as he stepped out of a Chinese military helicopter after being rescued. He still wore his white canoeing helmet and a yellow and blue waterproof jacket.

Three other members of the expedition were found dead last week. Medical experts who examined the bodies said they had fallen into the river and drowned.

One member of group remains missing.

Rescue efforts have been hampered by the difficult terrain and dust storms, which forced a suspension of the search earlier this week.

The six Russians set out on August 21 for a 12-day trip along the Yurungkax, which cuts through the rugged Kunlun Mountains before disappearing in the Taklamakan Desert.

They were reported missing after they did not turn up at a pre-arranged meeting point on September 2.

Canoeing on the upper reaches of the Yurungkax is dangerous, given the elevation of 3,000 meters and higher and the river's fast, rocky course, said Wang Wei of the China Association for Scientific Expedition, who canoed the Yurungkax's lower stretches in the 1990s.

"The water flows really fast, and rocks in the river, which could strike the canoe at any minute, are the main threat," Wang said.

Zverev on Friday said it was a miracle he survived 20 days in the wilderness without food.

Both the canoes of the six-man expedition capsized, he explained, throwing the crew into the river.

"A man cannot fight that water for a long time. He manages to fight for a few minutes and then his strength disappears," Zverev said. "Then only a miracle can save him."

Agencies - Xinhua