KOLKATA: As devastating flash floods swept through different parts of Nepal on Wednesday, 32 tourists from Kolkata were reported missing.
The group of 32 tourists, including a US-based Indian, had left Kolkata on August 21 under the aegis of a travel agency for a pilgrimage to Manasarovar and reached Nepal on August 22.
According to a Bengali news portal, the tourists had stayed in Kathmandu on Tuesday and were scheduled to leave for Manasarovar via the Nepal-Tibet border.
Dibyajyoti Basu, speaking on behalf of the travel agency, said, according to the news portal's report, that the tourists were scheduled to cross the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday. The group had shared photos and videos from Kathmandu until Tuesday.
“Today, around 8 am they were there in the immigration department in Nepal, but they could not be contacted since then. No one of the group could also contact the travel agency,” Basu claimed, according to the news portal's report.
An international organisation, which makes all arrangements for the Manasarovar tour, is in touch with the Nepal government, but the Kolkata tourists' group could not be traced so far.
Another group of 65 tourists from Arambag in West Bengal's Hooghly district has been stranded in Chetanpark, 120 km away from the epicentre of the flash flood in Nepal's Rasua district.
The group had left for Nepal from Arambag on August 24 by a tourist bus. Families of the group are in deep anxiety, though they have been able to contact members of the group.
The floods, triggered by torrential rains and a surge in the Bhote Koshi River near the Tibet border, swept through parts of central Nepal, damaging bridges, villages and hydropower projects and leaving hundreds of people missing.
The disaster also left many Nepali workers in Delhi worried about their families and relatives as they tried to establish contact with people in the affected regions.