Tea break turns lifesaver for 5 Chhattisgarh men amid Nepal floods

Sometimes, it is the most trivial decision that can alter the course of a life. For five friends from Chhattisgarh, a casual tea break in Nepal on August 26 became the thin line between being swept away in a devastating flash flood and escaping it.What was meant to be a brief pause, ended up saving the men from the deadly fury of the disaster that unfolded on Wednesday. The group spent the next two days harrowingly sheltering on higher ground, sleeping in their rented car and watching the swollen Trishuli river rage below.Narayan Sen, Dinesh Ojha, Prem Singh Jagat, Yatendra Prakash and Dinesh Singh Thakur, all aged between 50 and 60 years and residents of Mana Camp area in Raipur, returned home on Saturday."We were lucky that we stopped for tea on August 26 when the flash floods struck. If we had left 10–15 minutes earlier, we might have got trapped," 53-year-old Sen, who runs a salon, was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. "Had we not stopped there, we do not know what would have happened," he said. The group departed from Raipur on August 21 and arrived in Nepal the following day. They had hired a car and were planning to visit the Pashupatinath Temple, Manokamana Temple and other tourist attractions in the Himalayan nation.At around 10 am on August 26, the day the disaster struck, they stopped for tea at a hotel in Nepal's Dhading district. "There we learnt that a bridge ahead had been washed away in a flood. The hotel belonged to an Indian, who helped us a lot and provided us with food," Sen said. The men became unwilling eyewitnesses to the unfolding tragedy. The group managed to take shelter on higher ground at Malekhu and spent the night in their vehicle.Locals and authorities helped them. Thakur (55), who is a police head constable, said he and his friends were around 50 km from Pashupatinath Temple when the catastrophic flood struck."While having tea at the hotel, we noticed people suddenly becoming restive. Later, we learnt about the devastation caused by the flood. We heard that entire villages, buildings, offices and hydropower projects had been devastated," he recalled.They later visited the bank of the Trishuli river to witness the situation first-hand. "What we saw is very difficult to describe in words," said Thakur."We kept chanting Lord Shiva's name, and we feel his blessings protected us," he added. Thakur lauded the local administration and police's handling of the deeply distressing situation."There was no electricity and water, but the administration and police helped us. They told us that we were at a higher place and should not worry," he said.The tourist group managed to stay in touch with their families back in India via the internet, and used the helpline provided by the Indian government to share their location."Internet service was working well there, so we remained in contact with our families and did not panic," Thakur said.The friends were finally able to leave Nepal on August 28. Amid the devastating disaster, the five men shared a heartwarming moment when local women security personnel tied rakhis on their wrists to mark Raksha Bandhan."We were supposed to return from the trip after the Rakhi festival, so our sisters had already given us rakhis. The women security personnel deployed there tied these rakhis on our wrists. That was the most comforting moment," Thakur said.Dinesh Ojha, who runs a tailoring shop, said the scenes they witnessed in the aftermath of the flash flood would stay with them forever."We will never be able to forget what we saw. Many people were desperately searching for their missing family members," he said.Ojha further said the group remained worried about the possibility of another flood hitting the affected region. "We slept in our car, but we could not really sleep. There was always the fear that another flood might come," he told PTI."We are happy that finally we have reached back home," Ojha added. As of Sunday morning, the official death toll in Nepal from Wednesday's flash flood stood at 734. Meanwhile, nearly 3,000 people remained missing.- Ends(With inputs from PTI)Published On: Aug 30, 2026 10:32 IST