Hyderabad: What began as a disruption turned out to be a life-saver for 40 tourists who narrowly escaped the deadly terror attack in Pahalgam on April 22. The group had to change its plans of visiting the famous meadows because of a landslide that blocked the Kashmir highway two days earlier.
Among them were V S Anand and his wife Ratnam, a couple from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, who recounted their near-miss to TOI. “Had things gone according to plan, we would have been in Pahalgam at the time of the attack,” said Anand. “It’s nothing short of a miracle. God had other plans for us.”
The couple, along with fellow travellers from Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, had embarked on a seven-day North India tour, beginning April 19 from Delhi. After darshan at Vaishno Devi in Katra that day, the group was to reach Srinagar on April 20 and Pahalgam on April 22—the very day tragedy struck.
But a cloudburst triggered landslides that rendered the Kashmir highway impassable. The travel company, acting on weather alerts, rerouted the group to Amritsar and later to Manali in Himachal Pradesh.
Tour guide Ashish Singhal confirmed the decision. “The management asked us to abandon the Kashmir leg and head to Himachal instead,” he said, adding that the downpour had been relentless. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to cancel his planned April 19 visit to Srinagar to inaugurate the Delhi-Srinagar Vande Bharat train.
“Looking back now, it feels like we were pulled away from danger by an unseen force,” Ratnam added. “By God’s grace, we were saved,” Anand said, the weight of what could have been still sinking in.