'Nothing but death in front of us' Survivors of India floods recount horror

A boy dives into the rising waters of the Yamuna River in New Delhi on Wednesday, June 19. Heavy rains have been lashing parts of north India, as the annual monsoon arrived nearly two weeks ahead of schedule, officials said.

Rishikesh, India (CNN) -- It was late at night when the priest raised the alarm.

Heavy rain was pelting down over Gobindghat, a small town in the foothills of the Himalayas where Sikh pilgrims stop on their way to a holy site farther into the mountains.

A monsoon deluge had swept in earlier and heavier than usual in this part of northern India, bringing a sudden risk of floods.

But before residents and pilgrims in the town could do much to heed the priest's warning, water had engulfed the town.

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"Some people climbed upwards, some ran here and there," said Gurjit Singh, who had traveled to Gobindghat with his 12-year-old son. "It was chaos."

Barrages of water, mud and rocks have hit scores of towns and villages in the Indian state of Uttarakhand in the past week, devouring homes, shrines, roads and vehicles.

Uttarakhand's chief minister, Vijay Bahuguna, has described the disaster as a "Himalayan tsunami."

Dotted with temples and often referred to as "the Land of Gods," Uttarakhand attracts large numbers of pilgrims from around India to its mountainous reaches. Those travelers, far from home and short on belongings, are now caught up in the floods' destruction.

Thousands of rescue workers are desperately trying to reach more than 50,000 people cut off by the flood waters. Officials have put the death toll at 207 but warned it could rise far higher, with some villages still under water.

Other parts of northern India including New Delhi have also been hit by flooding, but Uttarakhand has suffered by far the worst of the devastation.

The rains over the region have eased in the past few days, helping make possible the rescue of more than 33,000 people. Those who have made it out alive express a mixture of relief and horror.

'A second life'

"There was nothing but death in front of us," Singh said Thursday after getting out of a crowded car ferrying people to dry, flat land. "Now that we've got out, we feel like we've got a second life."

His son, Rana Udesh Pratap, remembers a long trek to safety.

"I held my father's hand and walked and walked and walked on a narrow path," he said. The two had made the pilgrimage to Uttarkhand from the nearby state of Punjab to visit the Sikh Hemkunt Sahib shrine.

Other survivors are still struggling to come to terms with what they saw and how they will return to normal life.

A man named Kailash told CNN's sister network CNN-IBN that he, his wife and four-year-old son didn't know how they were going to get back to their home in Jodhpur, hundreds of kilometers to the southwest.

"We don't have a penny, how will we reach home?" Kailash asked, explaining that his family had gone hungry for three days before they were evacuated to a hospital in the town of Rudrapyrayag.

They had been in Kedarnath, a centuries-old Hindu holy town that sits at the heart of the havoc wrought by the flood waters. Images from the area show the deeply revered temple in the center of the town encircled by mud and rocks.

Kailash recalled horrific scenes that he and his family saw before they were airlifted out.

"We had to walk over dead bodies," he said. "Nothing is left there, everything is finished. We can't even find our relatives."

A search for the missing

Many other people are searching for family members lost amid the chaos. A Facebook page for rescue and relief in Uttarakhand is peppered with pleas to help finding missing people.

"It is with great hope that I am writing to you to alleviate the distress of my family," wrote Shantalu Srivastava in a post seeking information on his brother, sister-in-law and two young nieces.

Srivastava said that the family had traveled to Kedarnath from Lucknow, in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, and that he had last heard from them on Sunday afternoon.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conducted an aerial survey of the flood-ravaged region on Wednesday. His national government has sent in the army to help with rescue efforts and promised 10 billion rupees ($170 million) in disaster relief funds to the Uttarakhand government.

Meanwhile, some observers are saying the disaster was man-made.

Devinder Sharma, an environmentalist, blamed industrial activity in India's Himalayan region for the disaster.

"This havoc is a result of massive deforestation and mining," he said. "It's an ecocide."