Life In A Tunnel: How The 41 Banded, And Survived, Together

'Never lost hope; when food was not coming through, oxygen was'

- Amit Bathla and Debabrata Mohanty

They had entered, a band of brothers, at 8pm on November 11, eager to work through the night, so that when they emerged the next morning, Diwali could be celebrated in earnest. But at 5.30 the next morning, as the machines whirred, and the 41 men in the hard hats welded and forged a crucial pathway in the Himalayas, the tunnel around them rumbled. The mountains are predictable in their unpredictability, and for a while the men continued undeterred. But for the next half an hour -- as they gradually grew perturbed -- the debris continued to fall, completely blocking their exit. They scrambled at first, but their experience told them to stand back and find cover. Bisweswar Nayak first remembers looking at his mobile phone at 8am. “By that time, we knew we were trapped. I was scared, and all I could think of were my family, and my children,” Nayak said.

For the next 17 days, Nayak and the 40 other men made a 2km stretch of the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarkashi their home; finding inventive ways to survive using the bare minimum the collapsed structure had to offer. Their only solace each other, they were afraid; lost hope; found it again; lost it again; but stayed together as rescuers on the outside went through one technique after another to find a way out. On 7.45pm on November 29, they finally emerged -- to a shower of marigolds, cheers, and waiting family -- healthy and on their feet.

Nayak, 40, from Odisha, had worked in tunnel construction in the mountains for four-and-a-half years, and when the sounds of a landslide first began at 5.30am on November 12, he had first believed they would find their way out. “There have been at least four earthquakes during my years in Uttarakhand and never had something like this happened. We kept delaying, thinking it would stop, but the rocks kept falling. By 8am, the debris was close to 70 metres thick,” Nayak said.