TILATHI KOILADI: After nine days trapped in a hydropower tunnel and a week of hospital care following his dramatic rescue, Sanjay Sah, a rare survivor of last month’s devastating glacier collapse in Nepal, finally returned to his village and family on Sunday.
It was a homecoming marked by relief and joy but also grief.
‘I was trapped in the tunnel ... I felt trapped in the hospital room too. I finally feel free here in my village,’ Sah, 30, said after arriving in Tilathi Koiladi.
Almost 1,400 people have died and 5,130 are still missing across Nepal after a Himalayan glacier collapsed near the Chinese border on Aug 26.
Around 900 power station workers remain missing. Sah, a mechanical foreman at the Upper Trishuli hydropower station, was one of just three pulled fromdebris-buried tunnels extending deep under the mountains.
He survived in the darkness, drinking flood water and seepage from the mountain rock until rescue workers finally reached him.
Sah left the hospital in the capital Kathmandu on Friday and the next day boarded a bus for home.
Tearful homecoming Around 60 people, mostly women, awaited his arrival on Sunday.
Family members, including his parents, uncle, wife and daughter, performed a traditional welcome ceremony, washing his feet as part of a cleansing ritual.
After his mother dabbed a pink vermilion tika on his forehead, Sah bowed.
They embraced and then broke down in tears.-Reuters