Guwahati: What began as an easy holiday in Arunachal Pradesh’s postcard-pretty Ziro Valley ended with a frantic walk through a broken highway, darkness closing in, and the constant dread that the next roar in the hills might be a flash flood.K Arora and her husband, visiting from Delhi, arrived in Ziro in Lower Subansiri district on Tuesday and checked into a homestay for the night. By Wednesday morning, they set out for Itanagar, expecting a straightforward drive along NH-13. The day still felt calm when they started, Arora said, until the weather flipped without warning as they neared Poosa village.“We were staying in a homestay in Ziro. And the morning we started our journey from Ziro to Itanagar, everything looked pleasant. All of a sudden a dark cloud engulfed us and it started raining heavily and there was a sudden roadblock. Later we came to know about the massive flash flood just near the spot where our vehicle got stranded due to a landslide,” Arora said.Ahead of them, the highway had been ripped apart by a massive landslide—one large section washed away, leaving vehicles with nowhere to go. Almost simultaneously, alarming news travelled through the stranded traffic: a flash flood had struck the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited (NEEPCO) colony nearby, sweeping away five people.With rain pounding and the situation deteriorating, the couple made a decision that changed the rest of their day. They left the shared vehicle behind and began moving on foot toward Itanagar, stepping into a landscape that was shifting under the downpour. For nearly two hours, they trekked across landslide-hit stretches, navigating the hilly, forested terrain as the light began to fade.Arora later described it as one of the most frightening days of her life—made worse by the sense that danger wasn’t confined to the slopes above them. It could also come rushing through the valleys below.“After seeing one after another landslides, as we were walking towards Itanagar, we decided to return back to Ziro. It was a remote location and we could not find a government official to assist us. After walking back for a few hours, by evening we met some police personnel along the road and they gave us shelter. Otherwise we could not imagine how we would have spent the night under open sky under such inclement weather,” K Arora told TOI.“The biggest worry was the news of a flash flood in a nearby spot. We thought what will happen to us if such a flash flood or cloudburst strikes us,” she added.That night, the police shelter became a lifeline, a pause point amid warnings of more rain and more flash floods. The next morning, Thursday, police personnel took the couple back toward Ziro. There was no facility to airlift them from where they had spent the night, but they were able to reach Ziro without hitting another roadblock. From there, officials said, an Arunachal Pradesh Civil Aviation helicopter airlifted them to Itanagar.Arora and her husband were among 17 tourists rescued by air from the disaster-hit district, where landslides and flash floods had stranded visitors and snapped connectivity.
