When Solomon Nyanjui crashed his helicopter into remote forests at the foot of Mount Kenya, his survival chances looked bleak, but the retired Army major called on years of military training to miraculously survive.

His ordeal started after he set off on a routine flight in a helicopter owned by the Kenyan Power and Light Company on Thursday last week. Around 4pm on the day of that flight his aircraft developed problems and plunged into the Chuka forests at the base of Mount Kenya.

Nyanyui managed to crawl out of the wreckage but stayed within its vicinity to improve his chances of being rescued. However the dense forest and the heavy rains he had crashed in meant that while rescuers were quick to the general area it was difficult to pin point the exact location of the crash.

Nyanjui watched frustrated as rescue aircraft circled the vicinity of the crash, but failed to spot him. He however did not give hope, "The plane came down very fast and crashed under a thick canopy. The search teams over flying the area could not see me. They were so near yet so far, which made it agonising,".

Over the next seven days as his water ran out Nyanjui was forced to resort to more drastic means of survival , "I realised even leaves are sweet because I fed on them together with my urine after the water I had ran out," he was quoted as saying from his hospital bed.

He was eventually able to send out an SMS message which meant the combined search team from the Kenyan WildLife Service (KWS), the mobile phone company Safaricom amongst others were able to zoom in on the crash site and send in a ground search rescue team.

The rescue team found him a few metres from the crash site, suffering from several broken ribs, multiple lacerations and severely emaciated. Nyanjui is now recovering in hospital in Nairobi and has been inundated with well wishers marvelling at his miraculous tale of survival against the odds.