Rudraprayag:
The day began on a bad note. The news was that a thousand pilgrims had been detected in a period of less than 24 hours in one of the most inaccessible parts of the Kedar Valley - between Kedarnath itself and Gaurikund.
By the end of the day, the news was changing fast. The Army and the Air Force have been able to set up makeshift helipads and dozens of these peoples who have been stranded in some of the worst-hit areas have been evacuated.
I was on one of the sorties being carried out by the Indian Army and it was heart-warming to see six children being brought into the safety of this helicopter along with their parents so that they could all be flown to the safety of the Rudraprayag region where I am now.
For the Army and the Air Force pilots who have been operating day in and day out, the conditions have been very difficult. This morning, when we were trying to fly to the worst-affected areas where these 1,000-odd pilgrims have been detected, we had to abort our mission because the weather become very bad all of a sudden and we were confronted by a very heavy mist. We were able to divert our helicopter near Hemkund Sahib, the famous pilgrimage destination, from where I was able to see the last batch of stranded pilgrims being evacuated.
These pilgrims were not in a bad condition per say because of a Gurudwara close by, but road access to them was cut off entirely at a lower height, which is why the helicopter remained their only lifeline, their only way of getting out of the region.
Slowly the story of Uttarakhand is shifting from rescue to what happens next. While it is true that there are still thousands of people that need to be pulled out, the fact of the matter is they are being pulled out in very large numbers with the Air Force and the Army having committed more than 50 helicopters. Therefore, the long term question now is what happens next to these people. A lot of the people who are local residents and who have also been evacuated have lost everything. They've lost their homes, they've lost their businesses, they've lost their loved ones. It is impossible for them to return to their homes because it may take months for these road links to be re-developed.
What about businesses and what about work and employment? These are long term questions that cannot be answered as quickly as the result of a successful rescue mission, which is why the long term story of Uttarakhand may well be a story of immense hardship for the thousands of local people whose lives have been destroyed by the merciless, unrelenting flood waters of these rivers in the state.