Miracle ride from Gaurikund

VISHVENDU JAIPURIAR

Pushpa Prasad at her residence in Hazaribagh on Friday. Picture by Vishvendu Jaipuriar Hazaribagh, June 21: Hazaribagh resident Pushpa Prasad (48) will never forget June 13. She and her 10 family members started out anticipating a helicopter ride at Gaurikund in the lap of Garhwal Himalayas, Uttarakhand, at an altitude of 6,000ft above sea level. They ended the day from Haridwar where they clambered on a Delhi-bound SUV, hurrying towards the plains to save their lives. "Thank god, thank god," Prasad, now safely at her Kolghati Road residence, told The Telegraph on Friday morning. "I reached home last night (Thursday)," she added. Prasad believes the hand of god is behind her safe return. "Not me alone, my 10 relatives too," said the widow of inspector Ajay Ranjan of Police Training College, Hazaribagh. "I was inside a six-seater helicopter at Gaurikund when heavy downpour started. We had been weighed as well — it's a mandated procedure. That's when we were told by Pawan Hans officials about the cancellation of the chopper tour from Gaurikund to Kedarnath. We'd paid Rs 8,000 each for the trip. That moment, perhaps seeing the seriousness on the faces of the officials, we decided to head to Haridwar," Prasad said. They hired a 13-seater SUV and amid steadily increasing downpour and the first landslides, made the 235km trip back to Haridwar. "Hundreds of cars were moving slowly, it seemed half of India was there. Rain kept lashing the hills, boulders fell and we realised something out-of-the-ordinary was on," Prasad said. With her were relatives from Jamshedpur, Adityapur and Calcutta. Prasad's travelling companions included PWD engineer Vinay Kumar Sinha and his wife Ragini Sinha from Vidyasagar Path of Kadma, Jamshedpur, Adityapur industrial area employee Dileep Kumar Sinha and his wife Preeti Bala, as well as Calcutta residents L.P. Srivastava, Sheela Srivastava, R.P. Srivastava, Manju Srivastava, Vijay Ranjan and Sangeet Sinha. "It was due to lord Shiva's blessings that we reached Haridwar on June 13 night. We had stamina and sense not to wait. We hired SUVs for Delhi and reached the national capital on June 14," Prasad said. Reaching Delhi, Prasad and her relatives put up at her married daughter Maun Mayuri's home at Dwarika Sector IX. On June 18, Prasad boarded a train to Hazaribagh. "The full impact of the natural disaster dawned on us in Delhi. God must have something good in store for us. Else, getting out of Gaurikund was nearly impossible," she said. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130622/jsp/frontpage/story_17034963.jsp#.UcWkyDtHIqM