Faith still made their hopes alive to make it to the Char Dham pilgrimage one-day in their life, but this unstinted belief of Bisht family gave in when they recounted their horrible experience of the natural calamity they had to face and ‘poor’ arrangements that the State Government has made to mitigate the hardships of the affected people.
“It was god’s grace that saved us during the four days we remained stuck on way back from Gaurikunad,” said Hemant Singh Bisht, a resident of Haldwani’s CMT Colony, who along with his 13 family members including six children had gone to Char Dham pilgrimage on June 14.
“We safely reached Guarikund and was raining during the night. We started our journey to Kedarnath next morning but the volume of waterfall on the way to Kedarnath rose so high in a few minutes that we could not get through it and decided to return.
However, the return journey was not less horrifying for us. About 50 mules and over a dozen men we saw near Guarikund earlier had been washed away when we were returning back,” he said.Bisht further said that they had to stay at Sonprayag on their return journey on that night. There were over 50 tourist buses and over two dozen medium mode vehicles at a parking place at Sonprayag.
But the next morning there was not even a single vehicle as the parking was also washed away. More so, there were at least four/ five persons were in each vehicle as staff.“Though we were safe, our nightmare in terms of scarcity of food and accommodation had just to begin. Even a small plate of rice was being sold for Rs 100. later that was too not available as the hoteliers had to wind up. On way home road block added to our woes,” Bisht further recounted.
“After Sonprayag when we started our journey back home there was road block at Fata on way to Guptkashi. The JCB operator had shown his inability to work owing to fuel crisis.“Then all the motorists provided minimum fuel from their vehicles after which the JCB machine was restarted to open the road.
“Before reaching home on June 20 while the elderly persons of our family had to stay in forests, six children who were with us had to sleep in the two cars that we had for want of accommodation. Bisht said.He also added that “during that period we had not seen any help from the police or the State Government. No Government representatives or the police were there even to enquire about the conditions of the victims. But the villagers were quite supportive as they had greatly helped in opening the road near Fata and a few other places”.