‘I last heard from my mother stuck at Gangotri on Thursday’

It was on Thursday around 1:30pm when Jatin Makkar last heard his mother’s voice. His 62 -year-old mother is among the 50,000 people stranded due to floods at Gangotri in Uttarakhand.

It was on Thursday around 1:30pm when Jatin Makkar last heard his mother’s voice. His 62 -year-old mother is among the 50,000 people stranded due to floods at Gangotri in Uttarakhand.

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Makkar lives in Huda Sector 7 and had left Gurgaon on June 12 with four of her friends for a pilgrimage to Yamunotri and areas around. Her son is too worried about his mother’s whereabouts. "I know she is safe but I haven’t been able to establish her location," said Jatin Makkar.

"They had left in an Innova car for Uttarakhand. All of them are senior citizens and women," said Jatin, 33, who is a financial analyst.

Jatin hasn’t been able to contact her mother after Thursday. "My mother called me up from a hotel in Gangotri. She said that everyone was asked to evacuate the hotel and head towards the helipad, which was 25km away. They were transported in an army truck but were dropped 5km before the helipad as the route was inaccessible. She told me that she was going to walk up to the helipad. That was last I heard from her," said Jatin.

With floods and landslide wreaking havoc in Uttarakhand, electricity supply has been cut off in the state. The hotel manager used to switch on the power back-up for an hour daily for the occupants to charge their mobile phones.

"The cellphone must have got discharged. Perhaps that is why she hasn’t been able to contact me. I got in touch with her friends’ families, but even they haven’t been able to contact their family members," added Jatin.