According to her parents, she had gone on a Manasarovar trip with her friend as part of a tourism group.
Hyderabad:Two Hyderabad-origin women who went on separate pilgrimages to Manasarovar in Nepal went missing after flash floods struck the country on Wednesday. Kandimalla Suhasini Reddy, 44, a New Zealand citizen, and Vandana Chand, 49, a United States citizen, are currently missing.
Suhasini Reddy, a mother of two, was among five people from New Zealand who went missing. According to her parents, she had gone on a Manasarovar trip with her friend as part of a tourism group.
“On Tuesday night, she said she would head to the immigration centre at the Chinese border on Wednesday morning around 8 am or 9 am. She also said their phones might not be active as it is a border area,” Suhasini’s father, Mahender Reddy, said.
Suhasini was travelling with a group organised by the Kailash Journey travel agency. According to the Nepal Tourism Board, the group had 31 travellers, including five Nepalis and 26 others whose nationalities have not been confirmed. The travel agency informed the New Zealand High Commission at 9.30 am on Wednesday that the entire group was unaccounted for.
Meanwhile, Vandana Chand has been reported missing while on a Manasarovar pilgrimage with an Isha group. According to her relative, Piyush Jain, Vandana is a US citizen originally from Hyderabad. She travelled from Richmond, Virginia, to take part in the Manasarovar trip.
Piyush said she was last known to be at the Gyirong Tibet Immigration Office. He further said that he had appealed to all authorities, including officials at Telangana Bhavan in New Delhi, to help establish contact with Vandana, but had not received any response.
Isha Foundation founder Jaggi Vasudev, speaking in a video on his YouTube channel, said there were 80 people in the group, including 22 from the United States, 12 from Canada, 11 from Australia, nine from the United Kingdom, four from Germany, three each from France and Nepal, two each from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore and Spain, and one each from Finland, Hungary, Israel, Lithuania, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia and South Africa, along with three volunteers and a doctor.
He said the foundation last heard from Praveen, the group leader, nine minutes before the flood hit, and that the entire group was inside the immigration building.
“At 9.05, he sent a message that they had arrived at immigration. After that, this flood happened at 9.14, and the entire group was in the building,” he said.
