Stuck for 6 days, Sikkim tourists recount horror

It was 12:30am on a chilly, wet Wednesday in the sleepy tourist town of Lachen in North Sikkim. Malay Kumar Saha and Kakali Saha, both 54, were asleep in their hotel room, tired after a seven-hour drive from the state capital Gangtok, but looking forward to an early morning trip to the Gurudongmar lake at 17,000 feet, where the clear water mirrors the mountains around it.

- Joydeep Thakur

There were two sudden noises, both urgent, both ominous. The first was the sound of the telephone in their room. The other was someone frantically banging on their door. The message was the same.

“The hotel employees told us to grab belongings important to us, and evacuate the hotel immediately. A flood was coming,” Malay Saha said. Rescued after six days by