MUMBAI / NAGPUR: With a prayer on their lips and a grateful heart, 47 pilgrims from Maharashtra returned from Nepal on Saturday, the first from the state to arrive from the Himalayan country devastated by the glacial collapse on August 26.
Initial attempts to evacuate the large group by road hit repeated dead ends. Fearing for his mother’s health, Chaudhary’s son Harshal made a crucial decision. He and the other three families arranged emergency flight tickets from Kathmandu to Delhi for the group of four.
Buses arranged by the local administration were forced to turn back at Lele Village, and attempts to cross into Bihar were halted by the Nepali police at Lalitpur for safety reasons, says Indira Choudhury. From Delhi, they boarded the Kerala Express on Friday, finally returning to Nagpur on Saturday at noon.
Four others collapsed into the waiting arms of family members at the Nagpur railway station, where they arrived on the Kerala Express from Delhi after taking a flight out of Kathmandu. “After losing my father, the thought of losing her was unbearable. We haven’t slept a wink, nor have we eaten. They were in Kathmandu to visit the revered Pashupatinath Temple there.
“Lord Mahadev saved us,’’ said Pooja Bhosale from Malad in Mumbai, on landing at the Mumbai airport, where she along with 42 others arrived on an Indigo flight from Kathmandu. As soon as Varsha Upadhyay, 64, stepped onto the platform, her son Sagar and daughter-in-law Priya rushed forward, tears of relief streaming down their faces. The group, all from one family, also included Indira Chaudhary, 65, Sulochana Khapre, 70 and Deepak Pande 51.
“My mother is everything to us,” said Sagar, a healthcare worker at a government hospital in Hinganghat.
Hours earlier, in Nagpur, the Upadhyay family counted the minutes anxiously until the Kerala Express pulled in. Varsha was among four pilgrims from Vidarbha who returned on Saturday.
