Buses carrying pilgrims washed away

21KUSAMA.jpg

Bengaluru: Fifty-seven pilgrims from Karnataka had a narrow esc­ape from the fury of the floods in Uttarakhand when their parked buses were swept away in the foothills of Gowrikund. The passengers who were staying in a nearby lodge are stranded in Gowrigaon and awaiting rescue.
The pilgrims had hired the buses from Agarwal Travels in New Delhi to go to Kedarnath on June 15. After dropping the pilgrims at a lodge in Gowrikund, the buses had been parked. An hour later they were swept away in the flood.
The passengers who are from Chennapattna, Bengaluru and Belgaum were to leave Kedarnath on June 16. “We saw our buses being pulled into the river in front of our eyes. An SUV we had hired in New Delhi slipped into the river along with the buses.
We hear that 800 vehicles were washed away in the flood waters. Luckily, all our luggage and rations were in the lodge and we are surviving on that,” Narayan Shenoy, a tour operator from Mangalore told Deccan Chronicle.
Altogether, about 500 pilgrims have been stranded in Gowrikund for the last one week, and about 150 pilgrims are from Karnataka. The group of 57 is waiting to be rescued by air and hope every day that it will be their turn next. They say the stranded pilgrims are themselves hampering operations by not being disciplined.
“The sorties which otherwise took five minutes to airlift stra­n­ded people, are taking more than 20 minutes due to mismanagement of stranded persons. On Thursday the Air Force was able to pick up only 314 pilgrims from Gowrikund. At present we are taking shelter in a house in Gowrigaon which is located two miles from Gowrikund,” Shenoy said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/238006" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-ddfd0b43ccf6ca88f3ada6a120b988c0" value="form-ddfd0b43ccf6ca88f3ada6a120b988c0" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80063439" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.