They dodged death several times in a week. They trekked over 100 km through landslides. Finally, they conquered a natural calamity to return home safe.
That’s the story in three sentences of a group of 24 tourists from Akurdi who were stranded in Uttarakhand for nearly a week. They landed in Pune on Sunday.
The group of 16 women and eight men were on the Char Dham pilgrimage the floods and torrential rains in Uttarakhand left them in dire straits for nearly a week. “For the first time we saw the destructive side of nature and we thought we would never return home,” Sanjay Lanke, one from the group told dna.
They were stuck in Ongi village near Uttarkashi for three days after the flood first struck Uttarkashi. The group members had to climb a mountain to save themselves from the river’s fury.
“ We had senior citizens in our group and we had to take them to a safer location. But the we saw the floods sweep away the road we were supposed to take to return to Uttarkashi. We had no option but to take shelter on the mountain for three days when the flood waters started rising.”
At last when the water level resided, they walked all the way to Maneri village where they spent another three days as the road from Maneri village and Uttarkashi had also been swept away in the floods.
“We were short of food, of water> some members of the group were ill. That’s when we panicked. We called the helpline numbers but didn’t get any response.
We realised that we would get no help from the government. So, we started walking tos Uttarkashi with the hope that we will get some help on our way.”
Devraj Patil, another member of the group, said,”After walking for more than 100 km over several hills with landslides taking place we finally reached Uttarkashi where some people of an ashram arranged a vehicle for us to reach Rishikesh on Friday.”
From Rishikesh it was to Delhi by road where they boarded a flight to Pune, and home.
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