4 friends on way to Gangotri swept away in flash flood, rescued by Army chopper

Gangotri Temple

Four young men survived a harrowing ordeal after their vehicle was swept away by a flash flood in the Himalayas while travelling to the Gangotri shrine.

What began as a quiet birthday trip turned into a test of survival when the sudden flood struck near Harsil on Tuesday, leaving the group stranded overnight in a remote stretch of Uttarakhand’s mountains, according to a TOI report.

The four, including university students Amritansh Kumar from Lucknow and Alok Gangwar from Bareilly, had set out from Dehradun late Monday with a plan to visit the sacred pilgrimage site.

Amritansh, a final-year BCA student at DIT University, had chosen this trip to mark his 21st birthday on Saturday. The friends reached Uttarkashi by nightfall and were making their way into the hills the next morning when disaster struck.

As per TOI, their vehicle was caught by a flash flood somewhere between Uttarkashi and Harsil, carrying away the car, phones and all their belongings.

The group narrowly escaped the rushing waters, but remained unreachable for hours after the incident. Their families endured a tense wait, with no contact from the young men until the following morning.

“We tried calling them after we saw the news, but none of the phones were reachable,” said Amritansh’s elder brother, Aadarsh Kumar, who travelled from Lucknow to Dehradun on Wednesday, TOI reported. “There was no word until this morning.”

When they finally connected, it was a brief and patchy conversation from a temporary army camp where the men were being sheltered. “They told us they were being kept in a temporary camp. They couldn’t talk much. But they sounded okay. That was enough,” Aadarsh added.

Later on Wednesday evening, the families learned that the four survivors had been airlifted to Uttarkashi by an army M-17 helicopter along with others rescued from the flood-hit areas. They were expected to travel to Dehradun by road and arrive on Thursday.