Army personnel rescue pilgrims at Gaurikund in Uttarakhand on Saturday. (PTI)

Patna/Motihari, June 22: Paying Rs 50 to charge mobile phones, hiring donkeys for Rs 200 and staving off danger at every bend is what a group of 51 from Bihar faced while undertaking the arduous journey back to safety after undergoing five traumatic days at Janki Chatti near Yamunotri.

Nearly a thousand persons from Bihar are still missing at different locations in the Himalayan shrines of deluge-devastated Uttarakhand.

The Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) run by the Bihar disaster management department has received missing reports for 917 people till Saturday evening. Officials at the centre claimed they had been successful in retrieving the locations of 128 people.

The journey back home for the survivors is no less daunting. They are now required to walk down several miles and fork out hundreds of rupees to locals for help in getting their children and elders cross the risky valleys.

The survivors are having to pay a fee to the locals to get their mobile phones charged. As big vehicles still cannot ply on the makeshift roads, the survivors are being charged hefty amounts by owners of smaller vehicles to reach safer locations.

After being stranded at Janki Chatti near Yamunotri for five days, Gopalganj resident Rumali Baitha and 51 others in his group walked around 45km from Friday morning to reach Barkot by Saturday afternoon.

“It is sad that locals are financially exploiting the survivors. At Janki Chatti, we had to pay Rs 50 to get our mobile phones charged. Rates for hiring donkeys to travel a few hundred metres on the hills ranged between Rs 150 and Rs 200. The amount is normally not more than Rs 50. As our pockets were emptying, many people left behind their heavy luggage. We had to pay a further Rs 5,000 for booking a bus for taking our group from Barkot to Rishikesh, where we are halting tonight (Saturday night),” said Baitha, who is expected to take another two days to return home.

Arjun Prasad Gupta of Gaya was stranded at Rampur near Kedarnath for six days and returned to Haridwar today. “We paid Rs 1,000 per night for one room. The only solace was that the hotel owner gave us dal-roti in the morning and at night and rice-dal in the afternoon,” said Gupta, who would board a train from Dehradun on Sunday to return home.

The Centre has said that 557 people have died in the calamity as per initial estimates. The number of injured has been put at 412.

Back home, family members of around two dozen pilgrims from East Champaran are yet to get any news of their relatives.

Dr Shatrughan Prasad Shahi, medical officer (in-charge) at Madhuban PHC, is worried for the well-being of his son Satya Prakash, who left home with five relatives on June 10. “My son had last called me on the night of June 15 from Kedarnath and said they would leave the next morning and reach Motihari on June 20,” said the doctor.