Anxious kin seek safety of Raj pilgrims caught in monsoon fury

A young woman swept away in the cloudburst despite her husband's desperate struggle to hold onto her. Seven members of a family untraceable amidst the fury of the monsoon. Such has been the fate of some pilgrims from Rajasthan who had set out on a pilgrimage to the hills of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
Narayan Baheti from Bundi said that his son Naveen, daughter-in-law Neha, 25, and their one-and-a-half-year old son performed 'darshan' at Kedarnath on June 15 along with nine others.
Yesterday, Naveen called him in the evening to tell him that Neha was swept away in the cloud burst while they were making the descent from Kedarnath on Sunday morning.

"'The force of the flood waters freed Neha from my grip and swept her away into the overflowing chasm in the Rambada area,'" Baheti quoted Naveen as having told him.
The other members of the group were yesterday airlifted by army to the camp at Shrinager air base, Behati said.
But two days of searching for Neha yielded no result, Naveen told his father. Baheti said his son had expressed appreciation for the army's role in conducting rescue operations.

Another Bundi resident said that his son, daughter-in-law and their two children are part of a group of 12 pilgrims stranded in the Rambada area near Kedarnath, one of the worst-hit by cloud bursts and landslips.

Navratanmal Agarwal said that no rescue teams have reached his son Amit and his family who have been stranded since Sunday along with eight others in Gorikund, about 300 meters above Rambada.
"I spoke to my son on the phone today. He said no food or drinking water was available and that they have been hungry for three days," Agarwal said.