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Traffic snarls at Uttarakhand's Dhanaulti as tourists rush to escape city heat
Long queues of tourist vehicles were seen near Dhanaulti in Uttarakhand amid the ongoing heatwave across Indian cities.
With little to no respite from the scorching heat across India, travellers are packing their bags and rushing to the hills, leading to huge traffic jams on popular routes of the Himalayan holiday destinations.
Images surfaced on the internet showing huge queues of cars near Dhanaulti in Uttarakhand as due to a massive tourist influx amid the rising temperatures. Pictures shared by news agency ANI showed cars lined up bumper to bumper as people waited for the traffic to clear in the area.
Traffic snarls at popular hill stations are a common sight during the summer months when temperatures across many cities breach 40 degrees Celsius. Similar scenes are witnessed every year during these months in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and the hilly Darjeeling district of West Bengal.
Delhi, which is just hours away from tourist spots in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, recorded the second-hottest April in the last 27 years with an average maximum temperature of 40.2 degrees Celsius. Temperatures once again remained above 40 degrees Celsius. On Saturday, the city recorded 42.2 degrees Celsius.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the maximum temperature in the national capital is expected to touch 43 degrees Celsius on Sunday as the national capital continued to reel under heatwave conditions.
The heatwave is, however, expected to abate over Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and West Rajasthan from May 3. The IMD has forecast a partly cloudy sky with the possibility of thunder development and heatwave conditions at isolated places.
