At least 300 tourists and pilgrims were stranded on Thursday in a remote region in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand after a mountain road was damaged by a landslide.
The road was cut off near Lakhanpur in Pithoragarh district of the northern state, leaving hundreds of tourists stranded in the remote Dharchula and Gunji area – the picturesque villages on the border with Nepal.
Authorities said that about 100m of Lipulekh-Tawaghat, a key road at an elevation 5,191m that connects India with Tibet and Nepal, and India’s remote villages to the rest of the country, crumbled after a large section of hillside collapsed.
“The road is still blocked but we are opening it so people can use it by foot. There are teams of disaster response forces. We are working round the clock to repair the road but we can expect it to open completely in two days,” Bhupendra Mahar, district disaster management officer, told The National.
Mr Mahar said that the stranded people included tourists and pilgrims returning to Kailash Mansarover, the famous pilgrimage for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains, in Tibet's Autonomous Region.
Every year, devotees from India are given permission to visit the holy mountain.
Authorities have issued an advisory and asked all the pilgrims to stay in safe places, Mr Mahar said.
Landslides are a common occurrence in the mountainous and hilly regions during monsoon season that begins from June.
Several parts of the country are experiencing widespread showers with the weather agency issuing warnings for the southern state of Kerala.
Monsoons enter India from the coastal state in the first week of June and then gradually move north-west covering the entire subcontinent over the next three months.
The period is extremely significant for India’s economy because the whole country receives about 75 per cent of its annual rainfall during this period.
The capital Delhi too has received copious amounts of rainfall this year – about 186 per cent more than usual. This year it recorded the coldest May in 36 years.
