‘Slides have changed the entire landscape’

Sanja and her husband [below] and the masons [above] they were working with at the Tholung Monastery repairs works and a construction project there.

WORK-GANG OF 10 FLEES THOLUNG, BRINGS HORROR STORIES OF EARTHQUAKE DESTRUCTION DEEPER INSIDE DZONGU

ANAND OBEROI
GANGTOK, 22 Sep: “We do not know how to tell you what lies beyond these slides... There are landslides all along the route, most of them still active, and while were high above 12 Mile [near Bey], we even saw some dead bodies caught in the debris below. We had neither the strength, nor the courage to stop and check, we kept walking,” says 29-year-old Sanja Rai who walked for two days along with her husband Rajkumar and eight others to reach Mangan from Tholung deep inside Dzongu on Wednesday afternoon.
The ten of them were employed in the Tholung monastery renovation work and were there when the earthquake struck on Sunday evening. While Sanja and her husband hail from Pentok in Mangan and were employed at the work-site. The remaining eight are masons from Islampur, West Bengal.
NOW! met them near the Lingzya Falls in Dzongu on Wednesday, just as they crossed the landslide at this spot till where the roads have been cleared. They had left Tholung early on Monday morning and had nothing to eat since then. Walking for most part of the day and sleeping in the open at night, their feet were lacerated from walking on stones and their bodies covered with leech bites.
When they finally made it over the last landslide and were offered a car ride into Mangan, they were elated, relieved.
Sanja Rai is the only woman in the group which had eight masons engaged in the restoration work underway at Tholung monastery.
The monastery, they inform, has been extensively damaged with the walls having collapsed. There were no monks in residence at the time.
“We left Tholung on 19 September and were in the jungles the entire night. It was pitch dark. We did not have anything with us to build a fire. We could hear animals and what sounded like a bear growling nearby. It was also harrowing to spend the night to the constant crash of huge boulders rolling down and trees falling everywhere. It sounded as if dynamites were being exploded. We had no food or water. I can’t explain how we reached the road,” she tells NOW!
She could barely hold back her tears when she finally made contact with the ‘outside world’ and finally calmed enough to sit down and inspect the wounds on her feet, received from walking on sharp rocks and unsteady paths.
According to the group, there were so many landslides on the road from Tholung to Lingzya that they have lost count. They are convinced that even the fittest trekkers will find it difficult to make the journey in two days. As for negotiating the active litter of slides, no sane person will dare it unless desperate like them to escape, they share.
The desperate group cut their own paths through the forest and inform that the only people they met on the way was a labour gang the met a short distance before reaching Lingzya falls.
“We are convinced that we were walking through areas which no one had treaded till now. We had to find our way through makeshift crossings. If we slipped or tripped, we would have certainly plunged to our deaths. Entire hills have crashed and rocks from cliffs kept falling as we walked. The entire landscape appears to have been rearranged. Sweat and tears are all we tasted in our journey,” says an obviously traumatised Abdul Hameed, a member of the group of ten who made safely to Mangan from Thulung.
“When we first arrived here, we thought ourselves blessed for having received the chance to work in such a beautiful place. I could not recognise anything on the walk back,” he adds.
“We were sitting and talking after a day’s work when the earthquake struck. All ten of us ran to an open area and stayed put. We spent the entire night there and a soon as daylight struck we walked it. We did not carry anything with us since nothing seemed more important than fleeing the place. There was a big cow shed which existed near the monastery but even that had collapsed, the animals are dead. There was a lady who worked there who had told us that she would bring us some curd the next day. We don’t know what happened to her. We were too scared to do anything but run from there,” adds 20 year old Nasiruddin.
The 10 survivors also suggested that the army and NDRF rescue team try and negotiate their way to the affected villages via the banks of the Teesta since it would be faster through there. According to them there is no trial left in most areas and that one could easily get lost in the forests.
To get an idea of what awaits inside Dzongu, hear what the group said about the slides along the entry zone to Dzongu which have confounded relief and rescue teams: “These are just small rock falls and can’t be called a landslide. To see landslides and what devastation mountain boulders can wreck, you have to see the area we have crossed.”