New Delhi August 7:
            Amid the mounting death and debris of Choglamsar village -- located 5 km from Leh and a bustling settlement of Ladakhis and Tibetan refugees -- that has borne the major burnt in the massive mudslide sparked by Friday's cloudburst, comes stories of miraculous escapes bordering on divine intervention.
According to sources in Leh that media was able to contact through defence sources, the wife of an Indo-Tibet Border Police officer was found alive after being swept away by the slithering mass of mud. Another officer's child was saved by a sofa in their quarters. She was found under the furniture that saved her from being smothered.
Sources said the situation could have been worse but for the rumbling of the slithering mass of mud -- akin to cold lava -- and screams of people warning people in the defence settlements dotting the plains. Many in the defence establishment managed to escape nature's wrath since the slithering mass of mud did not gush like a stream of water, and the preceding rumbling gave some precious time to the people in the lower reaches to beat an hasty retreat.
Sources expected the Leh-Manali road to be opened in a couple of days as heavy earth-moving equipment, called JCB by the defence establishment, have been pressed into service. "Once the slush and big boulders are cleared, trucks can start moving even if the surface is strewn with small rocks or streams," a source said. Indeed, fjording streams of snow-melt is a norm rather than exception for truckers in this part of the world.
The urgency to get the road opened -- one of the two lifelines for Ladakh -- is understandable. First, material for relief and reconstruction has to be moved in quickly. Second, this is the time when food, fuel and military supplies for the entire year have to be moved in before the passes get inaccessible due to heavy snow. Troops, too, are replaced around this time, with fresh Army and paramiliatry units relieving those who had done their stint through the hostile winter. Any loss of time due to slides can prove to be costly.
Unconfirmed reports said the airport could be operational by Saturday, at least for military planes or choppers. But, BSNL's telephone exchange, in all liklihood, has to be rebuilt. Its transmitter has been damaged badly as it was on a slope outside Leh. Restoration of power supply, too, will take time as the Stakna hydel plant is believed to have been choked by silt. While Leh could still get some power in the evening from the diesel generating station, the fate of a similar plant at Choglamsar remains uncertain.
Villagers living in the upper reaches were not so lucky as they bore the full impact of the sliding pile of mud and rocks, living as they were in mudhouses built cheek-by-jowl. There is a patch of land -- 500 m long and 300 m wide -- near this village, about 15 minutes' drive on the road to Manali that has completely been overrun by mud that appears like mortar. This was where most of the Choglamsar village stood. The area is a plateau, with rising hills to its north and west. The wind-swept plain gently slopes towards the Indus that flows in a reverse arc towards its east and south.
The road to Manali runs right through the middle of this patch of land, which at many places appears like a desert. But this openness is deceptive. The surrounding hills and the depressions in the ground -- making it extremely difficult to figure out the locations of man-made structures -- give the place the character of a very wide bowl, or more aptly the bed of a sauacepan. Contrary to popular perception, the unprecedented cloudburst did not trigger flood. Mountains in the dry, cold desert of Ladakh are made of rocks stuck in loose, sandy formations.
Concentrated rains, thus, immediately turn them into mortar which then slithers down as a rumbling mass of cold lava and obliterates anything that comes in its way. Once the mass settles after exhausting its momentum, the water locked in the mortar and blocked behind the mass breaks free into gushing streams.