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A day after New Zealanders Graeme Nye and Helen Chesterfield arrived in the remote Himalayan town of Sangla they felt a bit of an earthquake and the monsoon rains started thundering down.
It wasn’t much of a shake, more like a tremor, Chesterfield said, but then the river beside the town surged into action.
“Big boulders were rolling down the ravine in the middle of the village,” Nye said.
And the heavy rain started. “Not non-stop but when it did rain it was very heavy stuff.”
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The couple, who are from Invercargill and in their 70s, were on a two-month holiday, planning to enjoy parts of the Himalayas.
“We don’t do trekking any more. We just go to the villages and enjoy the ambience,” Chesterfield said.
They arrived in Sangla in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh about a week ago.
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Graeme Nye and Helen Chesterfield (left) were among more than 100 visitors evacuated from a remote Himalayan valley after road access to the area was cut.
But the earthquake and the start of the monsoon triggered rock falls that cut the road access to the area in numerous places.
Electricity was also out, and water was in short supply, but residents of the area were undaunted.
“The only source of power was the local SBI Bank, which had a generator to power the branch, and each day dozens of locals would sit in the bank charging their phones from every available power outlet, even in the branch managers office,” they said.
“It’s amazing how resilient the people are … they just muck in and get things done and fix things up.”
Nye and Chesterfield had been stranded in the area along with five other foreigners and more than 100 Indian tourists.
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Graeme Nye with a soldier, who had helped evacuate them.
”After six days the Indian government really kicked into action, and we were all evacuated by the Indian Air Force in an Apache helicopter to an Indian Army base further down the valley where they had set up a hospital, shelter and food for all the evacuees.”
The Indian government provided buses to take the evacuees out of the area. They reached a rockslide and had a 1km walk along a hydro maintenance road to reach more buses on the other side of the rockfall.
Those buses were taking the evacuees to either Shimla or Chandigarh, but only travelled for another hour or so that day before it started to get dark. It was decided going any further in the dark would be too dangerous.
“So the Indian government accommodated everyone at local hotels and provided all the meals,” Nye and Chesterfield said.
“What an amazing commitment and undertaking from the Indian government, Indian Police, Indian Army and Indian Air Force for their incredible efforts to ensure everyone’s safety.”
BROOK SABIN/ONFLIGHTMODE.COM
Kiwis Brook Sabin and Radha Engling almost gave up on the idea of hiking the Himalayas, thinking it would be too hard. Here are 7 reasons they say you must do it. (first published April 2017)
On Friday the evacuees were put back on buses, with Nye and Chesterfield deciding to travel to Chandigarh, a city on the plains, where they spent Friday night.
”It’s hot, it’s so blimmin hot,” Chesterfield said, noting the contrast with temperatures in Southland.
The couple retired 15 years ago and had gone travelling every winter before Covid interrupted their sequence, he said.
The visit to India was their first overseas trip since Covid, and they have another five weeks in the country.
They wouldn’t be able to return to the mountains in that time, so were intending to spend Saturday working out a new itinerary.
People were suggesting they should go to the nearby state of Rajasthan. “But because it’s a desert state, we can see nothing but extreme heat,” Nye said.
“Everything is so different here. Every day is an adventure. It doesn’t matter where you go.”
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