Retired Bengal couple returns from Nepal, recounts narrow escape

A couple from Basirhat in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district, who had been in the vicinity of the flash flood-affected area in Nepal, came back home on Sunday and recounted days of anxiety before their safe return.

Retired schoolteachers Anukul Poddar and his wife Reba Roy Poddar, who were in a group of 17 pilgrims on the Mansarovar Yatra with a travel agency, said their tour manager received the news of the disaster and the driver reversed the vehicle in the nick of time.

The group turned back from around one-and-a-half hours driving distance from Rasuwa, which the flood tore through on August 26, the couple told reporters.

"We had set out around 6:30 am in a convoy of vehicles carrying Bengali and South Indian tourists. About two hours into the journey, our driver spotted water cascading down a hillside at a distance, followed by what looked like white smoke moving down a river," Reba said.

Also Read | Restaurateur Zorawar Kalra's cousin and his wife are ‘missing’ in Nepal, says ‘I’m simply hoping they are alive'

"We could see people running, children crying. That is when we realised something terrible had happened," she said.

The driver moved the vehicle to higher ground before their manager learnt over the phone that a bridge on the route to the immigration office had been washed away in the flash flood, cutting off further travel.

"We saw shops quickly downing shutters and schoolchildren running uphill," he said.

Anukul said they had planned to cross into Tibet on August 27, but instead reached Birgunj, a Nepal town bordering Bihar on Friday on the way home.

While the administration of Basirhat sub-division had advised them to fly to Kolkata from Patna, they said they did not have the courage to travel from Raxaul to Patna, and chose to return with the rest of the group by train.

They reached Howrah station on Sunday aboard the Mithila Express and were received by a team of the Basirhat police station, which escorted them home under state government arrangements.

Another retired couple from Basirhat - Swapan Mondal and Mou Mondal - who were also on the trip but with a different travel agency, remain untraced.