Behind the Scenes of a Himalayan Tsunami: Kedarnath 2013

Raudra Roop (रौद्र रूप) translates from Sanskrit as a “fierce,” “wrathful” or “terrifying form.” It derives from Rudra, the ancient Vedic storm deity associated with the savage and destructive aspect of Shiva.

Anyone who knows me well would probably laugh at my attempt to display my knowledge of Sanskrit. It is, to put it mildly, non-existent. I’ve been mercilessly teased over the years for my “Baba-Log” background — you know the type: English-speaking, Doon School, St. Stephen’s, colonial hangover, South Delhi and all that.

So no, I didn’t know what Raudra Roop meant in Sanskrit.

But I’d spent enough time outdoors to know what it meant in nature: That sudden, terrible transformation when the natural world turns monstrous and vengeful.

I first saw it as a teenager, when my family had a home in Himachal Pradesh’s Kullu Valley. With the coming of the monsoon, the Beas would transform from a pretty, emerald-green river into a roaring brown monster, spilling over its banks and devouring anything in its path. One summer, I watched a friend’s estate — a massive stone house surrounded by vast apple orchards — disappear in just a few hours.

And then, when the flood subsided, the river simply resumed its benign existence, as if nothing had happened.

Raudra Roop.

Years later, I heard the phrase repeatedly from survivors of the Uttarakhand disaster while filming the Discovery Channel documentary; The Himalayan Tsunami.

In the third week of June 2013, unprecedented rainfall triggered devastating flash floods across the region, killing more than 6,000 people according to official estimates, with the unofficial count putting it at more than twice that number.

The film followed two parallel narratives: firsthand accounts from survivors, and an investigation into what had happened in the part of the region that suffered the highest death toll. I figured the best way to tell the story would be to trek to the disaster’s epicenter.

In September, a little over two months after the floods, five of us — including my longtime friend and DOP, Sanjay Agrawal — set out from Dehradun with a team of glaciologists from the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology.

I had trekked to Kedarnath as a schoolboy. Under normal circumstances, I would have been thrilled to walk the trail again.

This was very different.

With every bend, the survivors’ stories came back to me.

I don’t care if it sounds clichéd, but following the Mandakini upstream felt like walking into a heart of darkness.

It began at Sonprayag, a devastated village. A car stood vertically against a smashed house, its headlights pointing skywards like some grotesque art installation.

Not far ahead was an abandoned bus. Among the debris lay a child’s tiny shoes.

I tried to imagine the chaos: old women scrambling desperately up hillsides in saris and flip-flops, panting for breath in the thin, oxygen-starved air.

As we passed Gaurikund, now scarred by landslides, I remembered survivor Jitendra Kukreti’s heart-wrenching account:

“As we tried to escape, I saw the hill come crashing down and rocks hit my son’s head. I spent the night holding him… We never found our daughter… My wife and I wanted to show the kids the mountains. Who would have thought that this would happen to us?”

We followed the wrecked walking track up the hill, littered with the burnt remains of funeral pyres. Many of the dead had been cremated close to where they were found. Subsequent rainfall had washed the blackened remains of a human jawbone into the middle of the trail.

It grimaced macabrely at us as we climbed uphill.

Then came Rambara.

The old rest-stop hamlet had once been a bustling cluster of shops, guest houses and restaurants. Now there was nothing. Just a vast, raw furrow gouged out of the valley.

Sixteen-year-old Libni Garg from Welham Girls’ School had been there with her family. Her voice echoed in my head:

“My father forced us out of the guest house and made us scramble up the hill in the pouring rain. I don’t know how he knew what to do, but we followed him… Then we heard a roaring sound and we saw a giant wave coming down below us. There were hundreds of people on the street, on the roofs of guest houses… some had their hands up in the air… One moment they were there, the next they were gone. The entire Rambara was gone…”

The old trail beyond Rambara was obliterated. A temporary Bailey bridge provided a new route that crossed the Mandakini and climbed steeply up in a series of punishing hairpins, eventually reaching almost 12,000 feet.

We had been walking and filming for eleven hours since 7:30 that morning. By now it was dark, and I was physically drained and mentally spent.

At the top of the ridge stood a huge tented encampment occupied by the Army and other relief forces who had been stationed there since the disaster. The lights, the movement and, above all, the smell of hot food were incredibly reassuring.

But we were told there was no accommodation for us.

We had to push on another three kilometres to Kedarnath town itself.

Three clicks more. I was so exhausted I sat down on a rock and could have cried. Even indefatigable Sanjay looked crestfallen.

But, as he always did, he simply pushed on.

I hauled myself to my feet and shuffled after him into the darkness.

We spent the next few days in what was left of Kedarnath town. The place resembled a dystopian Hollywood movie set. Some of the ruins still had bodies trapped inside — evident from the stench.

We lived in the only intact room of a partly smashed house. It was just big enough for one large bed, on which all five of us slept. The loo was a tiny room with a hole in the ground where there might once have been a squat toilet — no light, no ventilation, just an improvised pipe dripping into a battered steel bucket.

Sanjay scowled. He had just been with me on a filming trip to some of the most luxurious hotels in the world. As we sat on that miserable bed, he recalled the comforts we enjoyed at the Oriental in Bangkok and said thoughtfully:

“Robin, with you I have stayed in the best of, and worst of places.”

The next day, we trekked up to Chorabari Lake above the temple town. The glaciologists were appalled at what they found. The huge water body, once almost four hundred metres wide, was empty.

Their analysis was that intense pressure from the rain and falling debris from the glacier above had caused the lake walls to rupture. They called it a GLOF — a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood — which sent the lake’s contents pouring down onto the town below.

Imagine an ant that’s crawled down the toilet bowl - and then you pull the flush.

Gopesh Bajpai, a priest from Kedarnath who survived by climbing onto the roof of a building, spoke of the descending wall of water.

“I heard a thunderous crash and saw the Mandakini in her Raudra Roop. She was over ten feet high and bringing huge boulders down with her… She was like a five-headed serpent spreading across the town, taking everything in her path…”

The reportedly 1,200-year-old temple was one of the only buildings that survived. A giant boulder, almost the size of the temple itself, came down with the river and lodged itself just a few metres behind the structure. A little further and it would have pulverised the temple. Instead, it may have diverted the flood’s main impact away from the building.

The giant rock is worshipped today, believed by some to have been placed there by the legendary warrior Bhim to save Shiva’s temple at Kedarnath.

On our last evening, a massive storm broke. Torrential rain, an icy gale and cracking thunder and lightning ripped across the valley.

The intermittent flashes of light illuminated the shattered town. I imagined screams of anguish, smelt the fear and saw the dying.

I shivered in the cold, my imagination getting the better of me.

Legendary boulder-wielding warriors, five-headed snakes, Raudra Roop vengeful avatars…

A bit much?

Try saying that to someone who was there that night.

Me - I was happy to leave the next day.

Postscript: After the disaster, the Kedarnath Redevelopment Master Plan embarked on a ‘grand rebuilding’ programme, with new structures including the Temple Plaza, Arrival Plaza and numerous other buildings. Nearly 1.8 million pilgrims visited the rebuilt town in 2025. With plans for cable-car connectivity underway from the base of the mountain to the temple, those numbers are expected to soar.

For now, the Mandakini has been contained behind reinforced retaining walls.

She hasn’t shown her Raudra Roop since 2013.