Gangtok, Dec. 15: Clinging to a boulder and wrapped in two pairs of trousers, Asit Sarkar had managed to keep up a conversation with his wife and two sons throughout the cold night till help came nearly 12 hours later from the remote hills of North Sikkim. By then, his wife Meera had become silent, was probably dead. "I will never know if she died then or on way to the hospital. After sometime, she had stopped talking," said Sarkar today, two days after the car they were travelling in shot off the road and tumbled down the hillside 1000ft below. Sarkar, his two sons and another tourist from Odisha, Sanjib Kumar Sahu, were the only survivors of the crash on the Mangan-Dikchu road. Six tourists, five of them from Calcutta suburbs, and the driver were killed. They were in a hurry to reach Gangtok in time for their next day's tour programme. From his bed at STNM Hospital in Gangtok, Sarkar recounted the wait in the darkness of a mist-wrapped forest, not knowing from where and when help would come. "It was a foggy night and we were bound for Gangtok when the vehicle suddenly went off the road and plunged down the hill. When I came to my senses, I realised I had been flung out of the car. It was pitch dark. I called out to my younger son, Sohan, and he replied from somewhere down the slope. My elder son, Sourav also replied to my shouts. I could not see Meera, but I could hear her moaning, saying that she was injured," said Sarkar, a schoolteacher. Having somehow managed to collect his wits, Sarkar had called up a friend in Calcutta on cellphone and informed him about the mishap. By then, the Sikkim chill was telling on him. At this time of the year, minimum temperatures in Sikkim, especially in desolate stretches like 4th Mile, can drop to as low as six degrees Celsius. Sarkar spotted his luggage nearby. "There were two bodies lying close to my suitcase. I managed to take out two trousers and covered myself. I used a towel as a cushion as I sat out the night holding to a boulder," he said. But Meera's responses grew weaker and then she could not be heard any longer. "I could speak to her for the last time around 5.30am yesterday," Sarkar said. He said had the other two groups of tourists — three friends from Santragachhi in Howrah and two persons from Odisha — had shown up earlier, they would not have to drive in the dark. "We were supposed to start off right after lunch, but the members of the other groups came late and we left Lachung only at 4pm. Our vehicle stopped at the Rangrang checkpost just before Mangan, but I don't remember if the policemen there warned us against night travel," he said. Sources at the checkpost had said yesterday that they had reminded the driver that it was unsafe to travel at night but the tourists didn't heed. Although there is no ban on night travel in Sikkim, visitors are advised against it, especially in winter, as visibility drops to almost zero and it becomes very difficult to spot hairpin bends. Tour operators said middle-class visitors to Sikkim had a tight itinerary because of small budgets and were often unaware that it took more time to cover distances in the hills. "They usually come on very tight schedules. The North Sikkim tour should ideally be a two-day- one-night package. We tell them to extend their stay but they insist on the packed schedule," said a travel agent. The bodies of the five victims and those injured from Bengal will be escorted to their homes by the assistant protocol officer of Darjeeling, Jyoti Tamang. "We had told the relatives of the deceased not to come to Gangtok as we will take a 9pm train from New Jalpaiguri this evening. We have asked them to meet us at Sealdah station tomorrow morning," Tamang said. But the relatives of Judhisthir Satpathy, the 14-year-old from Odisha who died in the crash, and those of Sahu, who survived, were on their way to Gangtok. "I had been directed by the district magistrate of Darjeeling to take charge of the situation and ensure that the victims and those injured reach Calcutta," Tamang said. | 
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