Manasi Parekh has now returned to Mumbai after a tense and exhausting journey through China and Nepal. In the wake of the devastating flash floods and landslides that took place in parts of the region near the Nepal-Tibet border, the actor had been in Tibet for the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra in the middle of it and the situation was so bad that she was not able to get home.
Parekh just a couple of days ago wrote an Instagram story about the experience and thanked everyone for all the kind words and prayers, calling it “eerie” and “heart breaking” to have to go through it all. Her account made clear for many travellers the difficulty of leaving the affected area due to landslides and disrupted transportation.
As she was making her way back, Parekh wrote: “Thank you so much for all the love, messages, calls and prayers.. the last 3-4 days have been overwhelming and getting out of China and reaching the Nepal border felt like winning a war.” Her words reflected the seriousness of the situations she ran into while travelling.
According to the actor, one of the major obstacles came at Nyalam, a town in Tibet close to the Nepal border. A large landslide blocked the route and Parekh and other travellers were stuck in their bus for about four hours before they could embark on the journey.
The long wait was just one part of the journey. Parekh explained that once the road was finally accessible, the group traveled by bus for about 40 miles before reaching the Nepal border. But their problems did not stop there, because another landslide had affected the crossing on the Nepal side.
With road transportation unable to proceed normally, travellers were left with no choice but to walk through the landslide-affected section. Parekh said they had to make their way on foot because there was no other way to reach the buses waiting on the other side of the affected area.
With blocked roads, landslides and difficult travel conditions, the journey became particularly difficult. For people returning from the pilgrimage, what would ordinarily have been a routine journey turned into an uncertain and physically demanding escape from the affected region.
Parekh’s latest update came just days after she revealed that she had been at the same location in Tibet only five days before devastating floods hit. It gave her a new dimension to what she got, and shows how quickly weather and the ground in the mountainous area can change.
The actor had traveled to Tibet during the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, a pilgrimage that draws devotees from India and elsewhere in the world. And the route is high-altitude and mountainous, making access virtually impossible, if not impossible, due to the weather, landslides and road detours.
Her experience also underlines the difficulties that pilgrims and tourists have to face when they are in the path of natural disasters in remote areas. In such places there are few options for transportation and so even a single landslide can severely affect travel plans.
Parekh is now safely back to Mumbai but her description of the journey resonated with her fans who had feared for her safety. Her gratitude to those who reached out to her also demonstrated the anxiety she has felt on her journey in recent days.
Parekh’s journey to Mumbai is the end of a stressful chapter that started with a spiritual journey to Kailash Mansarovar. The actor describes waiting in a bus for hours, walking through difficult roads and passing through a landslide-hit stretch of Nepal border with the floods and landslides and tells us the disruption caused by it.
Parekh’s return as well as others who have been affected by the disaster is much to the relief of her family, friends and followers on her return (and her family’s rescue and relief effort). It is a real lesson that for a traveller going to the mountains in mountainous areas, things tend to get very hard and unpredictable at the same time.
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