Chennai, June 22, 2013: As the cameras were primed and ready, flanked on either side by anxious relatives, pilgrims returning from Uttarakhand after their near-tryst with death finally arrived.

V. Subhashini, who waited restlessly for nearly an hour, jumped off the barricade, broke down and hugged her mother S. Renuka Devi as she walked out of the airport. Renuka Devi (56) from Villivakkam in Chennai was among those 83 pilgrims from Tamil Nadu who were stranded in Uttarakhand for almost a week in the ravaging floods caused by the rising Alaknanda.

Wiping away her tears, Renuka Devi began recounting her experience, “The lodge we lived in, the horse we rode on, the road we travelled through were all washed away one after another. It’s a rebirth for all of us.”

The pilgrims, who all left on the evening of June 8 from Chennai Central toured through New Delhi, Agra, Gangothri, Yamunothri, Gowrikund, Haridwar and Rishikesh before reaching Kedarnath on Saturday, when the rains began. That’s when trouble started for this bunch of people.

“There were incessant rains and we remained marooned in the road for hours together as most roads were completely blocked. Every few hours, our relatives would make calls and many of us would run out of charge quickly,” said V. Sivaprakasam, the tour operator from Guduvancherry.

Between Monday and Thursday evening, it was four days of ordeal the pilgrims will not forget for the rest of their lives. “We did not sleep until Thursday night. On Monday night, we stayed at Nandaprayag and the next day, managed to find a location at Gauchar. Accommodation was poor, but we had no choice,” said K. Rajammal of Saidapet.

For these four days, they survived on biscuits and bread and paid Rs. 100 for a bottle of drinking water and Rs. 10, a mug for toilet facility. In some occasions, they even collected rain water flowing down the hills for drinking purpose.

“It is nothing less than a miracle that we are alive today. We just cannot forget what we went through in the past few days for the rest of our lives,” said Santhakumari Venkatesan from Palakkad, Kerala, who is currently a resident of Besant Nagar, living with her daughter.

It was on Thursday evening that they managed to reach Haridwar from where they got to New Delhi in two mini buses arranged by State government officials and stayed at Tamil Nadu House there. They arrived here at 1.15 p.m. by an Air India flight from New Delhi and were received by Transport Minister V. Senthil Balaji and Tourism Minister S.P. Shanmuganathan.

Among those who arrived, 67 are from Chennai, nine from Virudhunagar, three from Krishnagiri, two from Tirunelveli and one each from Coimbatore and Thanjavur districts.

While four persons, who were lodged at the Tamil Nadu House in New Delhi, had left for Chennai, 119 persons were still in New Delhi. By Friday night, 160 more were expected to reach New Delhi, according to an official of the State government.

Buses arranged by the State government dropped them at their residences in various parts of the city. Those travelling to other districts were dropped at CMBT in Koyambedu.