74 stranded Nepal tourists return to city in special flight

With relief writ large on their faces, 74 passengers, who were stranded in Nepal after yesterday's massive earthquake, returned to the city in a special Air India flight from Kathmandu.

Narrating their experiences, all of them said they had never felt so scared in their lives as they did after the 7.9 magnitude quake that devastated many parts of the Himalayan country.

"When the quake struck, I was in my hotel. The whole building shook like a log against wind and I hurriedly got out," Goutam Bhadra, an executive of a multinational company, said. Similar was the experience of Sanjor Ghosh of Chetla, who said he ran out of his hotel and went to an open place nearby where many like him were already there.

"I thought our lives ended the way the buildings shook and crumbled. We returned from the jaws of death," a couple, Durba Ghosh and Dhrubajyoti Ghosh, said.

The special Air India flight had left Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International airport for Kathmandu at 7 am with 50 passengers on board, mostly journalists, and relief materials. When a fresh tremor struck today, state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was walking towards the lounge of the NSCBI airport to catch a flight to Siliguri.