Delay In Flight, Tea Breaks Save Bheemili Pilgrims From Nepal Floods
A delayed flight and unexpected travel breaks helped 26 Bheemili pilgrims avoid Nepal floods that struck their route to Mansarovar.
Delayed flight and a 15-minute break for tea saved the lives of 26 pilgrims from Bheemili from the fury of floods in Nepal. Eight of them have returned home to Bheemili via Delhi on Friday evening, including ZTPC member from Bheemili Gadu Venkatappa Naidu.
Talking to this correspondent on Friday, Venkatappa Naidu said they had set off for the Chinese border on way to Mansarovar at about 6 a.m. on August 24. After traveling for three hours and covering a distance of 80 km, they came to a ghat road from where they could see a bridge over a river and a village nearby.
“Suddenly we saw people in the village running helter-skelter after sighting a gush of water in huge volumes. By then two buses had crossed the bridge and their fate is still not known. We took a U turn and climbed a hillock to save ourselves,” the ZPTC member said.
Recalling the sequence of their luck, he said their travel agent had missed his flight and arrived three hours late carrying their visas for Mansarovar. Had the agent come earlier, they would have started at 3 a.m., instead of 6 a.m. and got trapped in the floods. Further, people kept stopping the bus for toilets or having tea. This delayed their journey by another 30 minutes.
Venkatappa Naidu said apart from their group, four pilgrims from Visakhapatnam, three from Tadepalligudem, and several from Hyderabad escaped the flood fury. “This is the first time we headed to Nepal and the Himalayas. We will never forget the tense moments as long as we live,” he underlined.
The ZPTC member thanked Bheemili MLA Ganta Srinivasa Rao for remaining in constant touch, assuring them of help from the government.
