HASSAN, June 30, 2013“We had lost hopes of returning home,” said Raghavendra V.V. and his wife, Shwetha Raghavendra, both software engineers from Mysore who were stuck in flood-hit Uttarakhand for several days. They returned to Shwetha’s parents’ place in Hassan on Saturday.

They were part of a 26-member team, including nine of their family, who were on a trip to north India.

As heavy rain lashed Kedarnath on June 14 and 15, they vacated their lodge and moved to Gaurigav nearby, where they spent the next seven days without proper accommodation or food.

“The 26 of us were living in a 10x10 ft room. There were many aged people among us. We spent days without sleep, witnessing the large-scale devastation,” recalled Ms. Shwetha. She was in tears when she said they had lost hopes of returning home.

Help

They were thankful to the Uttarakhand government and the armed forces. “Without the help of the armed forces, we could not have reached home. We walked about 10 km to reach Sitapur, from where a jeep was provided for us. We travelled two days in the jeep to reach Rishikesh, from where we reached New Delhi by bus,” Mr. Raghavendra said.

Their parents had booked flight tickets for them from New Delhi to Bangalore.

Source: The Hindu, Dt. 30th June, 2013