Mangalore Five persons, all tour managers of city based Nirmala  Travels   have returned to Mangalore after being stranded in Uttarakhand floods. The five namely Umesh Banjan, Narayan Shenoy, Gokuldan Shenoy, Jagannath and Lokesh  reached home along with 55 other tourists after  being stranded for nine days.

Tour manager Narayan Shenoy said they had visited the holy place and were staying in a small village which is 3 km from Gaurikund, a  pilgrim center on the way to Kedarnath. He said one of the kitchen staff Ravikumar from Bangalore is still missing. As floods ravaged the place they moved to another place and had tough time arranging food for tourists  who had accompanied them.

Shenoy says he saw thousands of people begging for food and  added there was enough food for all only when the army men entered the rescue mission.

They recount how they saw several buildings collapsing and hundreds of people die out of starvation.

“A few of the elderly members travelled to Sonprayag via helicopter while the rest of the members climbed through an 8 km hilly region to reach Sonprayag from where we journeyed back to our home-towns,” he added.