Thane, For a group of 43 pilgrims from Maharashtra, the journey back from Nepal felt like a blessing, yet it was shadowed by the chilling memory that the hotel where they had just sat down for breakfast was swept away moments later in the flash floods.
The floods washed away the hotel where they had stayed and some of its staff members lost their lives, one of the pilgrims said. Returning home after narrowly escaping the tragedy, they carried the haunting realisation of how close they had come to disaster.
“When we learned that the hotel, where we had eaten our breakfast a little while earlier, had been swept away along with its staff members, we were left completely numb,” said Prakash Shantaram Mane, a Kalyan resident who had travelled with his wife Pratibha.
The pilgrims, accompanied by nine Nepali tour staff, eventually returned to Kathmandu on August 29 before boarding a Nepal Airlines flight to Mumbai on Sunday afternoon.
