I was there: Surviving the 'Himalayan tsunami' in Himachal

New Delhi: Hell hath no fury like Mother Nature scorned. Last week, I was taught a hard lesson in Nature’s rage, in the midst of a rock avalanche in Himachal Pradesh. I went seeking adventure and discovered humility instead. On 15 June, two friends and I had reached Kaza, a small town in Himachal Pradesh’s Spiti Valley on our last leg of a week-long drive through the state’s picturesque landscape. Kaza was the second last stop on our tour, from where we would head to Sangla valley, leading up to Shimla and back to Delhi. When we set off for Sangla Valley from Kaza in the afternoon, the weather was fair. But after a 30 minute drive through the mountains, it began to rain. When we stopped at the tea stall at sleepy little village of Leo, it was unusually crowded, with 6 other tourist vehicles parked outside. Two drivers from the waiting tourist cars began having an animated conversation with our driver, Ravi, warning him that severe and possibly fatal landslides had been reported on the road ahead. But we shrugged their warnings aside. “What could happen after all – it was only a spell of rain,” I thought. We Mumbaikars weren’t going to let a little water come in the way of our plans. As we sped ahead, we encountered our first landslide within 15 minutes. Ravi deftly manoeuvered the Tata Sumo over the huge boulders strewn all over the narrow road, even as he pushed at the accelerator with all his might, dodging the collapsing earth. We closed our eyes, even as the friend sitting next to me let out a loud scream in fear. “DO NOT indulge in backseat driving,” I told her, “You are distracting Ravi. Even if we aren’t going to die, we will die because of your shrieks!”. I had barely finished admonishing her when we approached our second landslide. Before I knew it, I was the one holding the driver’s seat and yelling, “Drive slow!” — even as our Tata Sumo swiveled and skid as it hopped like a bunny on wheels on the boulder-ridden road. Wide-eyed and gasping, we all banged our heads to the top of the car until we finally came to a standstill. At an altitude of over 12,000 feet I had just experienced my first real brush with death. “Why didn’t you drive slowly? What if we skid off the road into the valley?” I chided the driver. “Madame, driving slowly would get us hit, so I had to hit speed instead,” he replied. He’d made best of a devil’s choice, pinned between falling rocks on one side and the abyss on the other. We were already shaken, but what we saw ahead of us was scarier still. About 600 meters away, we could see water gushing down the mountain with big boulders rushing down at an even quicker pace. It looked like a river of boulders. We decided to turn around, once again brave the landslides we passed (which now seemed less dangerous) and head back to Kaza. We pulled up and reversed several times on the narrow mountain road to turn the car around, the three of us looked into the valley hoping we didn’t land up there. The ride back was a mostly silent one – intermittently praying for a safe passage through the two landslides and pondering over our good fortune to have survived them. We reached Kaza 3 hours later, after having realised how lucky we were to still be alive, far from the torrential floods of ravaged Uttarakhand. That night we slept like babies. Mother Nature had another surprise in store for us the next morning. We soon realised that the three of us had indeed gotten a second lease on life. We were told that most of the stretch of road that led to Shimla — including the one we had taken the previous day to reach Sangla Valley — had been washed away, swallowed in Nature’s fury. The previous day’s landslides were a lucky warning, we thankfully heeded. [caption id=“attachment_904149” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] We finally managed to get out of Kaza on Friday after the officials and workers of the Border Roads Organisation and the Indian Army helped clear glaciers that had formed enroute to Rohtang Pass. Arlene Chang/Firstpost[/caption] We stayed in Kaza for 5 days, waiting to for the road to open up and must have packed our bags to leave at least three times that week. Once we were woken by our hotel manager banging our door at 7 am informing us that rescue helicopters were coming. We jumped out of bed, dressed and packed in 10 minutes and then waited all day. Nothing and nobody arrived to fetch us. We finally managed to get out of Kaza on Friday after the officials and workers of the Border Roads Organisation and the Indian Army helped clear glaciers that had formed enroute to Rohtang Pass — some of which were as high as 18 feet. As we drove up and down the treacherous winding roads marvelling at both Mother Nature’s beauty and her brutality, I couldn’t help remembering the words of American poet Henry Van Dyke: “Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature’s loveliness? It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise. It is the sense that even if we should find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever.” The death and devastation of Uttarakhand warn us of the paradise we will lose yet again if we continue to treat it with reckless abandon.