Survivors recount horror on the hills

Anand Kumar of Gorakhpur sounded desperate when he called up his relatives and told them that he had been stuck between Gangotri and Uttarkashi for the past three days and had run out of food. He asked them to help him in getting out.

The survivors of the nature’s fury in Uttarakhand, that has so far claimed over 70 lives while hundreds of others reportedly missing, recounted the horror on the hills while speaking to their dear ones back home.

“We had left Rambara barely minutes before we were stuck by the rampaging river. We did not know where to go. We witnessed roads breaking and getting swallowed by the river,” recounted Akhilesh, who had gone to pay obeisance at Kedarnath temple with his three friends a few days back.

Akhilesh, a resident of Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh, told his brother Ashok on Tuesday evening that they had run out of food and still awaiting help from authorities.

Many survivors were witness to the death of several other pilgrims. Akash Kumar of Lucknow said he saw a girl falling into a deep gorge near Gaurikund. “We sa building being swallowed and boulders falling from the hills. It seemed as if we were being chased by death,” said Shanish Tripathi, another pilgrim from the state capital, said.
Shanish and his two friends were holed up somewhere near Soneprayag for the past three days. While Shanish, Akash and Akhilesh were the lucky ones to have survived the nature’s fury, many others may not be that fortunate. Hundreds of tourists and pilgrims from UP are still missing.

Pushpendra Nath Gupta, a resident of Bareilly, who had gone to Kedarnath with his family, is missing. His relatives said they  spoke to him on Monday evening. Since then there has been no contact with them, they said. A large number of people, who had planned to visit the hill state, have canceled their plan. According to the railway officials here, large scale cancellations have been reported from the trains bound for Dehradun and other places in Uttarakhand.

But there are people, who are also stranded at different places in the hill state but are not inclined to return home.