The horsemen refused to take them downhill. So did the porters. They had seen rains in the hills, but this downpour was something else. With no other choice, 16-year-old Libni Garg and family decided to trek down to base camp Gauri Kund from Kedarnath in the state of Uttarakhand. A peaceful pilgrimage suddenly took a different turn on the morning of June 16, 2013. “It was freezing…it rained so much that raincoats were pointless,” says Libni, speaking over phone from Dehradun. “We finally managed to hire two porters.” Libni’s story of struggle and survival will be featured in Himalayan Tsunami , a documentary that will be aired on the Discovery Channel.
Boulders cracked and trundled past them; bridges collapsed and rains beat against them with a vengeance. Libni and family moved on, desperate to reach safe ground. Once at Rambada, located 7 km from the base, they decided to rest for the night. Little did they know of the danger that awaited them the next morning.
Rains poured all night while they slept fitfully. Libni’s family was stranded. “The owner of the lodge in which we stayed was over 70 years old. He told us that not once in his lifetime had he seen floods rise over the first step of the building. But that day, water had reached the fifth step,” she recalls. The locals had never experienced such rains — there was chaos everywhere. “We were compelled to walk against the stream back to Kedarnath,” says Libni.
It was during this trek that Libni was witness to something she would never forget. A wall of water thundered past them, dragging along houses, utensils, cattle… As thousands lost their lives and everything they held close to the floods, Libni and her family walked on, forcing themselves not to look back. For it was the best they could do for their survival. “I asked my dad where we were going. And he said ‘I don’t know’,” says Libni. “That was when I got really scared.”
They reached level ground at last and rested their tired feet when suddenly — “A local shouted ‘Run, water!’” They did so without second thought. What followed were long hours of starvation; sleepless nights; and journeys that seemed to have no end or purpose. “Even the food packets the Government dropped from helicopters did not reach us,” says Libni. For, they were stranded in the remotest of corners. Help arrived at last on the morning of June 20 — they were airlifted by the Army along with other survivors. For Libni, who studies in a boarding school in Dehradun, the experience taught her the value of life. “I won’t take anything for granted,” she says. “Problems that seemed big before appear trivial now.” Will she be going to Uttarakhand again? “No,” she says. “I don’t think I’m going back.” Himalayan Tsunami, to be aired at 9 p.m. on December 23, looks at “what really happened” during the Uttarakhand disaster and “why”.
