"I went there for peace, but ended up facing nature's fury," a Delhi-based audio-engineer and disc jockey said upon his return to India from earthquake-hit Nepal.
Rajat Roy was scheduled to play at the annual three-day music festival called "Universal Religion" in Nepal.
"I was packing on Saturday morning to leave for the venue of the festival, when suddenly everything started shaking. It was so strong that things started falling in my room. I was absolutely scared," Roy told IANS.
Roy was with a group of 50-60 people from Delhi, Bengaluru and Guwahati. A few foreigners were also part of the group who were to attend the ninth edition of the festival with the theme "Re:Birth". It hosts several sub-genres of psychedelic trance music and has been dubbed as the festival of music, love and peace.
To be held from April 25 in Hathivan, 12 km from Kathmandu, it was cut short by the worst quake to hit Nepal in eight decades.
After the quake stopped, two from the group went to the embassy of India. The embassy staff asked them to go to the airport. But at the airport they found that it had been shut.
"There was chaos at the airport. People from different countries were waiting in separate long-winding queues, waiting for evacuation. There was nothing to do but wait."
They were eventually brought back to New Delhi by an Indian Air Force (IAF) plane in the early hours of Sunday.
"Whatever happened back in Kathmandu still haunts. We were lucky to escape," Roy said.
(Karishma Saurabh Kalita can be contacted at karishma.k@ians.in)
