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Three men who disappeared during a self-driving tour of Tibet have sparked searches both on land and online, as desperate family and friends use social media in an attempt to find them.

Missing men spark online search.[ Photo / Weibo.com ]

Huang Yan traveled to Tibet with two friends for a pilgrimage to pray for his mother, who is suffering from late-stage lung cancer. Huang and his friends Liu Ke and Wan Xubo set off from Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, on July 20, but have not been in contact with anyone since July 26.

Huang's wife, Ding Jie, is three months pregnant and kept in touch with her husband through regular phone calls and his micro blog. Huang's last entry was posted at midnight on July 26, and stated he felt drowsy, was short of breath and had some chest discomfort after driving past a mountain with an altitude of 5 kilometers.

Ding turned to her micro blog to ask for help to search for her husband and his friends on Sunday afternoon, and was quickly inundated with sympathy and support from thousands of netizens.

Within hours of posting the entry, people close to Bomi county, where Huang's mobile phone was last active, and Nyingchi county, where he made several calls to book hotels, went to vehicle checkpoints to gather information about the car, a silver Pajero, and to hospitals, in case the men had been treated for altitude sickness.

Police in Bomi learned of the case on Monday, and with information from telecommunication operators, they were able to send a team to the location where the mobile phone was last used.

A police officer in Bomi said the station had responded to several similar cases. On rainy days, the mudslides may make the roads in the area dangerous, but the station had received fewer distress calls in the recent string of sunny days.

Despite the efforts of netizens and the police, there is no new information as to the men's whereabouts.

A micro blog account managed by the Ministry of Public Security promised to post any information from police relating to the men's whereabouts.

Ding Jie's father, brother and two others flew to Nyingchi on Tuesday to help with the search efforts.

Ding said she is "stable". She said she would have accompanied her husband on the trip if she were not pregnant. She wanted him to take the trip, because they would be too busy after the baby is born.

Huang Yan's employer, an electric appliance seller, which is headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, has asked its employees to disseminate the news and help find useful information.

Wang Bo, Huang's colleague, was the first in the company to notice the online plea for help and quickly notified corporate leadership.

Responses have poured in from self-driving tourism associations, hotel owners and Internet users living close to where the three men were last contacted or were planning to head to, Wang said.

Two self-driving groups, one from Nanjing, the other from Beijing, are now touring Tibet and will be on the lookout for the three missing men.

Wang had been to Tibet once, on a self-driving trip in 2005. Mobile phone signals were sometimes so weak that he was unable to contact his family for two or three days, he said.

"They probably met with the same problem and have lost contact. I am confident that they are stranded somewhere and are admiring the landscape," Wang said.

According to Wang, Huang and his friends took a standard route to drive across Tibet, but they may have faced altitude sickness, possible car accidents or natural disasters such as mudslides.

Wang said people interested in driving through Tibet should take two cars so they can assist each other in case of emergencies. He also said they should practice by driving to less-challenging places first.

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