Uttarakhand trekking tragedy: The night of survival on a mountain for the Bengaluru trekking group Premium

Survivors recall a tragic trekking experience in Uttarakhand, highlighting camaraderie, endurance, and the will to survive.

“As the evening got darker and we were all huddling against a boulder, our trek group leader, S. Sudhakar, told us, ‘This is the night of survival. Nobody is coming to help you. As soon as we see some light in the morning, we will go down.’ This motivated many of us to make it through the night,” said Sheena Lakshmi, a 47-year-old woman, remembering the events of June 3, when a 22-member trekking group from Bengaluru got caught in a blizzard while descending from the Sahastra Tal summit in Uttarakhand.

“While I knew that death was not an option for me as I had to go back to my daughter and mother, I had one complaint the whole night. Even with four layers of clothing, including thermals and jacket, and a hat and a muffler, I was not warm enough,” she recalled. According to some surviving trekkers, the temperature touched anywhere between –8 degrees to –10 degrees Celsius that evening.

Nine members of their group died between June 3 and 4 due to hypothermia, as they were forced to benight near a boulder for their safety after a whiteout and a snow blizzard a few hours earlier made it impossible for them to trek down. Sudhakar’s wife, Asha Sudhakar, was one among the dead. Despite suffering a personal tragedy, group members remember how Sudhakar maintained a level head and took care of everyone else throughout the night.

“On one side, you know what you are going through, and on the other, there were young people who had families and their children waiting for them (and I had to keep them alive). Irrespective of what had happened, I had to focus on what was best for the team,” Sudhakar said in his house in Jakkur in North Bengaluru.

Sudhakar, who is in his mid-60s, and his wife Asha, who was in her early 70s, had met in the mountains decades ago. The duo had trekked several routes, including the Himalayas, over the years. Their home is a testament to their love for mountaineering and their fitness. While many pieces of art and photographs of the Himalayas adorn the walls, Asha’s swimming medals are displayed in one part of the living room. When they embarked on their recent trip to the mountains in Uttarakhand in the last week of May, they had not imagined that it would be their last adventure together.

Sitting next to his wife’s photograph, Sudhakar, who is also the joint secretary of the Karnataka Mountaineering Association (KMA), which had organised the trek, began to narrate the events of those two fateful days.

“Everything was going beautifully up until that point,” he said. The tragedy occurred on the fifth day of their schedule. By then, the trekkers had developed a sense of camaraderie among them. Most of them had met before on similar treks.