ITBP jawans rescue flood victims at Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand on Sunday. (PTI)

A group of 16 pilgrims from Bihar started its journey back home on Monday after remaining stranded at deluge-hit Badrinath for a fortnight.

The pilgrims stayed in an ashram for three days during the deluge and spent two nights on roads before being traced by the authorities. They had to wait for another 10 days for their turn to be airlifted from Badrinath at Chamoli district in Uttarakhand. They are expected to reach Patna by Tuesday night.

“We reached Badrinath on June 15 and offered prayers at the temple in the morning. The light rain at that point of time turned into heavy downpour soon after we returned to the ashram in the afternoon. The conditions worsened so much that we could not venture out of our rooms for the next three days. It was a miracle that the ashram where we stayed was not destroyed,” said Sreenivas Chari, an employee of SBAN College at Darhetta village in Arwal district.

The group comprising eight women and two children came out of the ashram on June 19 to find a way out of the temple town and stayed on roads for the next two days.

“There was very little food with us and it rained incessantly those two days. The biggest problem was non-availability of pure drinking water. We had to gulp dirty water flowing down the valley,” said Bichari Devi (80), a resident of Hajampur village in Jehanabad.

She is suffering from breathing problem and uneasiness at present.

The members of the group kept on approaching the Indian Army personnel at rescue camps those two days, requesting for being airlifted to safer locations.

“The army was initially rescuing only sick and physically challenged people, followed by senior citizens and children. But we were not comfortable with leaving our elders and children alone. We asked the army personnel to send us in a group, but our plea was rejected,” said Sreenivas.

After repeated requests, the army personnel at one of the camps finally allotted the group the number-448 for being airlifted together and asked them to wait for their turn. The pilgrims returned to the Ashram, around 3km away from the camp, and kept waiting for their turn for the next 10 days.

“We hardly found any relief measures by the authorities but the residents of the area, especially the pundits, were very helpful. They gave us food free of cost and even took care of our children when they were unwell. The destruction was more downstream. Almost the entire road network had vanished and we could see devastated structures down the valley,” said Nishikant, a final-year mass communication student at Patna University.

The group was upbeat as their turn for getting airlifted came on Monday morning. All the 16 people were brought down from Badrinath to Joshimath in helicopters.

By the evening, they were on their way to Hardwar. They would board a train to Patna from there on Tuesday morning.

While the group of 16 is on way back home, the Emergency Operation Centre of the state disaster management department is yet to trace the location of 48 people trapped at various locations in the Himalayan shrines.