We were travelling to Badrinath from Rishikesh, Uttarakhand in India. The pristine surroundings with clouds like cotton candies touching green vertical mountain ranges one after the other mesmerized us.
The noise of the fiery, misty Alkananda river flowing in the deep gorges made us ignore the sound of our own vehicle.
The wireframe bridges connecting the banks appeared as swings from the heaven.
The middle Himalayas captivated our minds entirely and we forgot that we were already running 4 hours behind schedule, on account of landslides, that we wont be able to reach our destination - Badrinath - by sundown.
The entire stretch of the road had land slides in some 50 places. After waiting for hours for the road to clear up we finally got stuck permanently at Pandukeshwar, about 22kms from Badri. Local people advised us to climb through a village road and we did.
The climb started with proper concrete steps. After climbing for 30mins we realised it will be impossible to climb down this road so we decided to return. Every bend that we climbed the road became narrow and we were going up by about 20 feet.
Our oldest and strongest member is 78 years young. He uses a stick. He was the fastest to climb, both up and down and he was most positive about the whole thing. While we were panting and gasping he never lost a single breath.
After climbing down halfway suddenly this man was missing but his stick was there. It took us a while to understand that he has fallen by the side. 3-4 mins later we were requesting everyone for help and most of them went away, someone said pray etc. One trekker said “I am going down fast to inform the police”. Meanwhile two horsemen came with their ponys, we asked for help, they refused. We started calling out for our fallen member because we could not see him from where we were standing. The mountains are quite vertical here, one cannot possibly bend down and check the depth. We were breathless with most of us crying for our lost member thinking of the worst and hoping that some help will come along.
The first ray of hope came through the old man’s voice and we knew he was alive. Then the two horsemen returned. Police came after sometime. They went to rescue the old man from a place that was three bends below where we were standing, at least 60-70 feet on the downward climb.
Now we were expecting a mangled, bleeding body and a semi paralysed man being carried out in human stretcher.
After almost 10 mins of waiting, that seemed like 10 million years, we saw the same blue jacket moving with the police and the horsemen on his own legs. We could not help our tear drops add to the rain, seeing him - a man of 78 yrs fallen 70 ft and is walking on his own, few bruises and cuts on the face and forehead with no broken bones or any other injury.
You can call IT love
You can call IT hope
Call IT a Rainbow or the Morning Star
Call IT what you like
The miracle of Life
You can call IT …
-Anjan Dutta
Police immediately took him to the nearest medical center. Few injections and pain killers administered and we were waiting for our vehicle to pick us up.
The warnings and indications were all over there even before the trip started. The tour operator informed us that the Helicopter services to Kedarnath were stopped due to weather conditions until mid September. We dropped Kedar from our plan and checked the weather on our dates of travel to Badrinath. Every weather app and website told us heavy rains with thundershowers. As we started from Rishikesh we were stuck on road for 4 hours on account of land slides. On the way we managed to avoid three accidents by whiskers, one was to be a head on collision. We ignored everything and continued.
Finally we accepted the fact that we should abort this trip. The police chief at Pandukeshwar kept pursuing that we must visit Badri when the roads open on the following day but for once better sense prevailed and we were determined to return.
The journey back home via Rudraprayag, Rishikesh, Haridwar and Dehradun can be best defined as an anticlimax. Nothing could have been more eventful after The Almighty has pulled us out of our ‘brain fade’ holding our fingers just like a parent does to the child.