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'We were to spend that night in Malpa'

A small landslide on the morning of August 17 a little beyond Malpa blocked the road to death for the 43-member ninth batch of pilgrims returning from Kailash-Mansarovar.

Had it not been for the landslide, they too would have perished as the ninth batch was scheduled to be at Malpa on the night the massive landslide had struck. It wiped out the village killing more than 200 people, including 60 ill-fated pilgrims of the 12th batch.

''I shudder when I think about the tragedy. We were to spend that night in Malpa and the 12th batch was to take our place at Budhi,'' said Vijay Joshi of Bombay, one of the 25 members of the batch that reached Delhi Friday morning.

''Being only nine kilometres away from the site, we were the first to reach the Malpa victims,'' he said.

Subsequently, the ninth batch were taken to Gunji where bad weather prevented them from being airlifted for the next one week, during which one of the members, Vinod, 55, died of an old ailment.

Joshi said Vinod was taken ill during the Chinese leg of the yatra with serious breathing problems. He had requested to be airlifted at his own expenses.

Vinod died on August 24, the day Indian Air Force helicopters landed at Gunji after the weather cleared and airlifted 17 pilgrims, mostly the elderly and women. Twentyfiive others were airlifted from Gunji two days later and taken to Pithoragarh.

''Had Vinod been airlifted earlier, perhaps one life could have been saved,'' Joshi said.

UNI

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