Eight trekkers and three cooks accompanying them on a trek to Chitkul, in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, have gone missing, Uttarkashi officials said on Wednesday.
The team of eleven people was on a trek to Chitkul via Harsil in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand, said District Disaster Management Officer Devendra Patwal.
The group comprising seven tourists from Kolkata and one from Delhi, had left Harsil for Chitkul on October 11 and was supposed to reach there on October 19.
However, when the team did not reach Chitkul on Tuesday, worried organisers informed the Uttarkashi District Disaster Management Office, Mr. Patwal said.
A State Disaster Response Force team is preparing to trace the missing trekkers by a helicopter, he said.
The team members have been identified as Anita Rawat (38) from Delhi; Mithun Dari (31), Tanmay Tiwari (30), Vikash Makal (33) Saurav Ghosh (34) Saviayan Das (28), Richard Mandal (30) and Suken Manjhi (43) (all from Kolkata). The cooking staff have been identified as Devendra (37), Gyan Chandra (33) and Upendra (32), all from Purola in Uttarkashi.
Pilgrims safe
Meanwhile, 96 people from Karnataka are stranded in Uttarakhand following heavy floods and landslides, of whom 92 are confirmed safe, an official said in Bengaluru.
According to the Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority commissioner Manoj Rajan, arrangements have been made to bring back those who are confirmed safe.
He said that among the four people, about whom the KSDMA has no information, as of now three are marooned in Badrinath and are incommunicado.
“We have no information about them because they are not reachable due to connectivity issue. We hope they too are safe,” said Mr. Rajan.
The fourth missing person from Karnataka is a soldier with the Border Security Force (BSF) and the BSF control room has been informed about it, the official said.
